Dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is accused of embezzling up to £3.64 billion from his former bank in Kazakhstan, should be extradited to Ukraine or Russia, a French court has ruled. The 50-year-old who had been in hiding since being sentenced to prison for contempt of court by an English judge 18 months ago, was arrested near the Riviera resort of Cannes last July and has been in custody since.

The former Kazakh bank chairman was once one of the world's richest men, is now the subject of the biggest UK fraud case in history. A millionaire alleged fraudster on the run, high politics, glamorous locations and beautiful women: the story of Mukhtar Ablyazov's life hardly needs turning into a John Grisham novel.

A court in France has agreed to a request from Russia to extradite Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive former Kazakh banker and political activist wanted on suspicion of fraud. Lawyers for Mr Ablyazov denounced the ruling by the court in Aix-en-Provence yesterday and said they would appeal to the Court of Cassation in Paris.

On a blustery February morning in 2011, Chris Hardman waited anxiously inside a Big Yellow Self Storage center in north London. A banner fastened to the box-shaped building's facade read "Get some space in your life." All Hardman wanted to do was see the contents of storage unit E2010.

He is wanted in his native Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia. He was ordered jailed in Britain. An opposition leader from a country that has been ruled by the same man since 1989, a former banker accused of siphoning off billions, Mukhtar Ablyazov has been jailed since police special forces seized him July 31 in the south of France. On Thursday, a judge is expected to rule on his extradition.

Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes has called on the European Commission to involve Eurojust and Europol in a Europe-wide investigation into Rakhat Aliyev, a Kazakhstani multi-millionaire residing in Malta.