Thiruvananthapuram, March 15 A Lithuanian man, wanted in the US for cryptocurrency fraud and arrested in Kerala early this week, had been living at the picturesque tourist destination in Varkala, a very miserly life.
46-year-old Aleksej Besciokov was arrested on Tuesday from Varkala by the Kerala Police, hours before he was getting ready to fly out of the country.
According to his landlord, Aleksej had been living in his house at Varkala for the past eight years and keeps coming and going.
He, according to the landlord, was a miser and it was after several years he agreed to increase the annual rent and he was driving an old two-wheeler costing Rs 12,000.
Aleksej in order to save money from the local workshop mechanics used to repair his two-wheeler by himself.
On Monday, a day before he was arrested, his family returned to their home country.
The locals also are amazed that they are yet to come to terms that Aleksej was someone dealing in crores and they recall him being a quiet personality.
While Varkala is home to numerous foreign tourists and most of them are boisterous while celebrating on the beach, Aleksej and those who occasionally used to visit him were quiet.
Meanwhile, an alert police official found something amiss when he arrived at the rented home of Aleksej acting on a directive from the Patiala House Court in New Delhi, on Tuesday.
Seeing the police officer, Aleksej offered the inspector a bunch of Rs 500 currencies which was later identified as Rs 50,000.
Soon the official informed the matter to the higher-ups and within no time, a bigger force of police arrived and he was taken into custody.
On Saturday, Aleksej who was under judicial remand in the state capital district was taken by air to New Delhi by a group of Kerala Police officials and CBI sleuths.
After reaching Delhi, he was produced before the Patiala House Court which sent him to judicial custody.
Aleksej had US sanctions against him from 2022, had set up a cryptocurrency exchange 'Garantex', and according to the US Secret Service documents, he is alleged to facilitated money laundering to the tune of at least $96 billion (over Rs 8 lakh crore) in cryptocurrency transactions by transnational criminal organisations (including terrorist organisations) and violated sanctions.
The sudden action that led to his arrest arose after the Ministry of External Affairs received a provisional arrest warrant at the request of US officials and that was effected by the Kerala Police at Varkala on Tuesday.
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