The US and Sweden have put a bounty on the head of alleged AN0M gangster Maximilian Rivkin

The US and Sweden have put a $7.6 million bounty on the head of alleged AN0M gangster Maximilian Rivkin, a key lieutenant of Australian drug kingpin Hakan Ayik

A $7.6m bounty has been placed on the head of a fugitive Swedish gangster who targeted Australia’s drug market and is a key lieutenant of Australia’s most wanted man, Hakan Ayik.

News of the reward offered for the arrest of Maximilian Rivkin comes as another of the 17 men indicted over the encrypted app AN0M, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, is extradited to the US, taking to five the number of international alleged gangsters now facing the US justice system on racketeering charges.

The US State Department and the Swedish Police Authority jointly offered a $US5m reward for information leading to the arrest of Rivkin, a Serbian-born Swedish citizen whose last known location was Turkey.

In a statement, the department said it was offering the reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Rivkin for “conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in trans­national organised crime.

“Specifically, Rivkin was administrator and influencer of an encrypted communication service used by criminals worldwide. His communications on the platform implicated him in several nefarious activities, including his alleged participation in drug trafficking, money laundering, murder conspiracy and other violent acts,’’ the statement said.

“This reward offer is being announced jointly with the Swedish Police Authority, who charged Rivkin with narcotics smuggling and trafficking.’’

The 40-year-old Rivkin was named on a US grand jury indictment unsealed in June 2021 and accused of being part of a criminal enterprise running the app.

He was also reportedly caught bragging via the app about his capacity to service the drug market in Australia, with de-encrypted texts reportedly released by Swedish police showing him boasting “I have a line to Australia” and “I am now with the biggest people in the world”.

The app, which was pushed by the likes of Australian drug kingpin Hakan Ayik, was marketed as a secure way to avoid law enforcement, but was in fact a Trojan horse app being run and monitored by the FBI and Australian Federal Police. While 17 people were indicted over running the criminal enterprise behind the app, more than 1300 people were charged globally with a number of crimes as a result of the sting.

A reward of up to US $5 million has been offered for the arrest of Swedish man Maximilian Rivkin. Picture: US Department of State

Five of the alleged AN0M 17 have been extradited to the US to face charges on the original indictment, and another four men are in custody in their home countries, including two in Australia. Eight people remain on the run, including Rivkin, Ayik and two other Australians believed to be hiding out in Turkey, Baris Tukel and Erkan Dogan.

The State Department said Rivkin was charged in the US with “international racketeering conspiracy involving drug trafficking and money laundering’’.

“This joint reward offer re­inforces US efforts to disrupt and deter transnational criminal activity globally and to build a global coalition to address synthetic drug threats,’’ it said.

“Transnational organised crime and illicit drug trafficking threaten economic prosperity and challenge the stability of governments and societies around the world. The US stands with our allies against transnational organised crime and its associated violence across the globe.’’

Australia’s most wanted man, drug lord Hakan Ayik, who is hiding out in Turkey.

Announcing the reward in June, on the second-year anniversary of the AN0M sting being make public, the State Department said Rivkin, who used the aliases Maximillan Rivkin, Milos Jankovic and the nicknames Maximilan, Malmo, Teamsters, Microsoft and Max, was one of several people whose “criminal conversations’’ had been uncovered since AN0M was infiltrated in 2018.

“From December 2020 through the spring of 2021, the FBI shared copies of Rivkin’s criminal conversations with the Swedish Police Authority, which implicated Rivkin in participating in a murder conspiracy, drug trafficking conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and kidnapping conspiracy,’’ it said.

As international law enforcement continues to close in on those exposed by the AN0M sting, one of Rivkin’s associates, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, is believed to have been extradited to the US.

A resident and citizen of The Netherlands, he is accused of being a distributor of the AN0M app and devices.

Under Operation Ironside, the AFP read and copied more than 28 million messages from the AN0M platform between 2018 and 2021, after the FBI bought the app from a tech-savvy drug dealer.

The world-first operation, dubbed the sting of the century, is being challenged in the courts, with a new motion filed in the US on behalf of three of the AN0M 17, including Australian man Edwin Harmendra Kumar, who was extradited early this year.

A team of lawyers has asked a judge in the Southern District of California to reveal the unnamed European country the AN0M messages were routed through.

In Sydney, a group of 66 people accused of mainly drug offences as a result of the AN0M sting have teemed up to challenge the validity of the technology used.

The case, known informally as AN0M 66, is listed for a committal hearing before a magistrate in Sydney in September.

A similar challenge in South Australia’s Supreme Court ended in April with a judge ruling the technology underpinning Operation Ironside was used legally.