A nationwide wanted notice was issued for Kivimäki during the summer after he failed to show up at prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Finnish police have issued a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) for 29-year-old Aleksanteri Kivimäki, who was convicted of hacking into the patient database of the Vastaamo psychotherapy centre and attempting to extort money from the company as well as its clients.
An EAW is a fast-track legal tool that allows EU member states to request the arrest and transfer of a person for a criminal trial or to serve a prison sentence. In addition to EU countries, EAWs also cover a number of non-EU states, such as Norway.
A nationwide wanted notice was issued for Kivimäki in July after he failed to show up at a correction facility to serve the remainder of his sentence. His lawyer, Peter Jaari, told Yle at the time that he did not know Kivimäki’s exact whereabouts but believed he was abroad.
A lengthy legal process
After a lengthy trial at Helsinki District Court, Kivimäki was handed a six-year and three-month prison sentence in April 2024 after being found guilty of charges including aggravated data breach, almost 9,600 counts of aggravated invasion of privacy related to the dissemination of information, more than 21,300 counts of attempted aggravated extortion and 20 counts of aggravated blackmail.
There were more victims in the Vastaamo hacking case than in any other trial in Finnish criminal history.
During the trial, lawyer Jenni Raiskio said in her concluding statement that her firm had been contacted by people whose relatives had taken their own lives after their patient records were published online.
The court of appeal subsequently extended Kivimäki’s sentence to six years and 11 months earlier this year.
However, prior to handing down that sentence, the appeal court ordered Kivimäki be released from pre-trial detention due to concerns he would spend too much time behind bars and therefore be eligible for compensation from the Finnish state.
Kivimäki currently has about five months of his sentence left to serve.
Not the first time
Kivimäki has a history of evading Finnish authorities.
A European Arrest Warrant was previously issued for him in 2022 after he was remanded in custody in absentia for the Vastaamo hacking and extortion. He was subsequently apprehended in France in February 2023.
Kivimäki was on the run again in early 2024, after the district court released him from pre-trial detention. The appeal court overturned this decision, ordering him to be remanded again, but Kivimäki was missing for about a week before police located him in Helsinki.
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