The Plenary Session of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court confirmed this Tuesday the extradition to the United States of Vitaly Vanshelboim, a former senior UN official accused by Washington authorities of having accepted million-dollar bribes in exchange for diverting $60 million in subsidies and unsecured loans to the companies of British businessman David Kendrick. The order thus confirms the decision made on October 21 by the Second Chamber of this same judicial body and which had been appealed by Vanshelboim, who, among other allegations, claimed that he enjoyed immunity because he was a staff member of the international organization and that the United States had not requested the authorization of its secretary general, António Guterres, to proceed against him. The judicial resolution has the dissenting vote of one of the 20 magistrates who have participated in the deliberation, which asks, precisely, to condition the delivery to the confirmation of the UN on the alleged immunity of the person claimed. The decision is not appealable, although the delivery must ultimately be approved by the Government.
Vanshelboim – to whom the Grand Jury of the Southern District of New York attributes crimes of bribery, electronic fraud and money laundering – was for nearly 30 years professionally linked to the United Nations, during which time he held, among other positions, that of executive director of UNOPS, the United Nations agency that supports infrastructure and procurement projects for other agencies, with employees in more than 80 countries. The former senior official allegedly committed the crimes between September 2015 and August 2023, when he held this position. Vanshelboim was arrested last March in Alicante pursuant to an arrest warrant issued by US authorities. .
In the order known this Tuesday, the National Court dismisses all the allegations raised by the former senior UN official, who had even alleged that his case supposedly covered up “political persecution” given his Ukrainian origin “in connection with strategic interests between the United States and Ukraine.” However, the magistrates discard this motivation by considering that the allegation raised by Vanshelboim “lacks the minimum objective basis, as it does not have adequate evidentiary support, not even indicative” and that “from what was done in the case there is no indication that allows, even intuiting, a possible instrumentalization of the criminal process as a means of institutional retaliation.” The judicial resolution also rules out that the former high official has the formal status of asylum in Spain, as he also claimed to avoid his extradition.
