The Washington Post
July 24, 1997
A Russian former banker, jailed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service since his arrest in Washington a year ago, was ordered released by a federal judge in Alexandria late Tuesday after a former INS prosecutor and a former Soviet KGB agent testified that they had serious doubts about the case against him.
Read moreOTC
July 8, 1997
WASHINGTON, August 7 (Itar-Tass) - U.S. law authorities released from custody a former president of the Russian Exchange Bank, Alexander Kononykhin, who is wanted in Russia on charges of stealing depositors' money. Kononykhin was charged in the U.S. with violation of the immigration law.
Read moreThe London Express
December 10, 1996
Millionaire Russian entrepreneur Alexandre Konanykhine is to fight deportation from the U.S., claiming he would be murdered by Moscow mobsters if forced to return to his homeland. Konanykhine is a vocal campaigner against corruption and organised crime in Russia.
Read moreThe Associated Press. USA Today
December 2, 1996
WASHINGTON - It's a tale worthy of a spy novel, the judge said.
Millionaire Russian Alexandre Konanykhine sits in a U.S. federal prison in northern Virginia, fighting deportation because he fears the mafia will kill him if he goes home. His wife, Elena Gratcheva, lives with her cat and a few pieces of furniture in the couple's $300,000 Washington condo near the Potomac, visiting her husband once a week.
The Washington Post
August 18, 1996
The U.S. government says Alexandre P. Konanykhine stole millions from a Moscow bank. But he says he is an honest businessman who ran afoul of Russian mobsters and corrupt government officials. And that sending him home means certain death. It's our call. Does he stay or go?
Read moreThe Washington Post
June 29, 1996
The dashing Russian immigrant couple lived like prosperous jet-setters, renting a co-op in the Watergate complex and driving his-and-hers BMWs. He had once been a successful banker in Moscow, and she had movie-star looks, according to federal immigration officials.
But two days ago, agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, acting in cooperation with visiting federal prosecutors from the Russian Federation, knocked on the co-op door and arrested the pair, who were wanted for allegedly embezzling $8 million from the Russian Exchange Bank in Moscow.
A week before Christmas, a green BMW rolled up to the Canadian border near Buffalo. As the driver, Alexandre Konanykhine, a Russian seeking political asylum in Canada, paid a bridge toll to leave the United States about a dozen armed federal agents surrounded his car and arrested him, Mr. Konanykhine said. American authorities then whisked him to a local airport and on to the Russian Embassy in Washington, Mr. Konanykhine said, where they unsuccessfully attempted to enforce a federal order that he be deported to Russia. Mr. Konanykhine, an ex-banker, now sits in an Arlington, Va., jail awaiting a federal court hearing next week.
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