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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

Wrong country to hide. Montenegro is a Nato member, and a US ally, and will do whatever the US say.

Dritan Abazovic (the prime minister) is himself half Albanian, half Montenegrin, and he is very pro western. You can't hide in pro US countries.

He should have maybe taken a train to Serbia (not a US ally), then a plane to Russia and hide there.

Ps. For some reason criminals think small countries are safe, but capturing criminals like this, that are most wanted by the US, is a huge political win for the small countries, (brownie points with the US) and they will do whatever it takes to get them.

Best countries to hide are larger countries that are not fully US aligned (think Brazil), or US hostile (Russia, etc)

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The main reason why you shouldn't hide in Montenegro is that everyone knows everyone. You can be found in 5 min if there's a political will.

When Covid started, it was brought to Montenegro by a tourist group which went to Spain. Very soon everyone knew by name who was in that group. Even worse, when Covid spread a bit, government published names of all people who were in self-isolation. Highly unconstitutional, yet highly effective in a relativelly small comunity. With this and other strict measures Montenegro managed to be Covid free in summer 2020 - possibly the only country in Europe at a time. Of course, it quickly fell apart as soon as strict measures were lifted.

So this is why you shouldn't hide in small countries. Only way to hide is to buy your stay there and I assume it can't be cheap if you're really wanted.

So far he isn't wanted in the US, but in South Korea

I would not be surprised to see an indictment being unsealed within the next few days. You can bet most of these crypto criminals are under US indictment if they defrauded Americans. They're just sealed until they are arrested somewhere.

For example, on Jan 7 the operator of "Bitzlato" flew to Miami. He was arrested and DOJ unsealed his indictment the following day.

EDIT: now in the US too

https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1639020334920728578

It's interesting to me that this is the current lay of the land. I've been to MNE many, many times and in my day it was a common belief that it was a favorite haunt for wealthy individuals who weren't able to get into the EU proper (and places like Monaco, Cannes, etc.)

Russia isn't one of the best countries to hide right now. It might have been tolerable cca a year ago, before the war started.

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