ASTANA. July 18 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan is reviewing Russia's extradition request for Nikita Kislitsin, an employee of F.A.C.C.T. (known earlier as Group-IB) detained by Kazakhstan, while the United States has not filed any formal requests thus far, Nurdaulet Suindikov, chief of the Kazakh Prosecutor General's Office's international legal cooperation service, said in reply to a question from Interfax.
"Regarding the detention of Nikita Kislitsin in the city of Almaty, we can report that the U.S. and Russia have confirmed their intention to seek his extradition. Russia's extradition request is currently under consideration. No request has come from the American side thus far," Suindikov said.
"The Prosecutor General's Office will consider Kislitsin's possible extradition in line with international and national law," he said.
Kazakh Deputy Prosecutor General Ulan Baizhanov said on June 29 that Kazakhstan would study U.S. and Russian extradition requests for Kislitsin.
Earlier, the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Kislitsin, who is charged with obtaining unauthorized access to computer information protected by law. The minimal penalty for this crime is a fine of up to 500,000 rubles, while the maximum penalty is a prison sentence of up to five years.
He is also charged with gross extortion committed by a group of persons through prior conspiracy.
In 2020, some media outlets reported that Group-IB employee Kislitsin was implicated in a criminal case in the United States. The U.S. authorities accused him of a possible role in an attempt to sell the personal data of users of a social network.
F.A.C.C.T. told journalists that its employee Kislitsin, who is responsible for promoting the company's network security business, was detained in Kazakhstan on June 22 at the request of the U.S.