A French court has ruled to extradite Russian banker Vladimir Antonov, a former owner of English football club Portsmouth, to Lithuania, his lawyer said on Friday. Antonov was detained in western France last December on suspicion of fraud, following a European arrest warrant from Lithuania. He is accused of having stripped assets and funds from a leading Lithuanian bank, Snoras, where he was a majority shareholder, between 2008 and 2011, when the lender was nationalised. A second arrest warrant issued in December 2025 added charges of corruption, money laundering and bankruptcy, with total losses amounting to at least 478 million euros ($551 million). Antonov's lawyer said that his client would challenge the ruling. In 2024, a Lithuanian court sentenced Antonov in absentia to 10.5 years in prison for embezzlement. In 2011, Antonov was arrested in Britain on the strength of a Lithuanian arrest warrant issued over the collapse of the Snoras Bank, but later released. He purchased Portsmouth, then in the second-tier Championship, in June 2011. He stepped down the following November when his company, Convers Sports Initiatives, went into administration following his arrest over the fraud allegations. In 2015, a lawyer said Antonov had fled Britain because he feared for his life.