Foreign Minister of Latvian Refuses to Extradite Gozi Writer to US

Latvia has set itself on a collision course with America after the nation's Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevic's announcement that he did not wish to extradite the alleged creator of Gozi Trojan to face justice in US, as accords to news published by theregister.co.uk on 2nd August, 2013.

Rinkevics wrote on the website of Latvian Foreign Ministry that he (Rinkevics) would not like to see Dennis Calovskis spending rest of his life in an American jail. The 27 year old Latvian programmer is accused of designing Gozi Trojan which was a Trojan used to steal data on more than a million infected computers in order to rob bank accounts.

He was assisted by one Russian Nikita Kuzmin and one Romanian Mihai Paunescu in designing. In January 2013, police force of UK, Latvia, Romania, Moldova, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and FBI found these three and charged them with fraud and computer -related offences.

Latvian courts have knocked back appeal of Calovski's extradition for the second time which could put politicians and judges at loggerheads. However, Rinkevics wanted to see Latvia change its whole extradition treaty with US which was rejected by judges.

Rinkevics wrote that he cannot take a decision as to whether Calovskis has broken the law as it is explored by purely legal means. However, he thinks that 67 years in jail is too severe punishment for a 27 year old hacker and may be even anti-constitutional.

Moreover, the Foreign Minister said that there were doubts whether Calovskis has committed any crimes on US soil. Mr. Rinkevics said that trans-national nature of the crime makes it hard to prove involvement of Calovskis and suggests that the suspected hacker should be put on trial in Lativia with assistance of US authorities with all the required evidences.

He went on to mention the case of a British hacker Gary Mckinnon who was accused of hacking 97 US military and NASA computers. Home Secretary Theresa stopped the extradition of Mckinnon to US in May, 2012 on the ground of his ill health. He will now be trialed in UK where his alleged offences took place.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/10/2013