Anika Begay
After a lengthy legal battle lasting more than 16 months, the Court of Appeal of Montenegro has finally ruled that cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon will be extradited to his home country of South Korea, rejecting a parallel extradition request from the United States.
Do Kwon One Step Closer to Trial in South Korea
Do Kwon, the co-founder of the now-collapsed blockchain protocol Terraform Labs, has been at the center of an international crackdown since implosion of his company’s Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies wiped out about $40 billion in investor funds. This prompted both South Korean and U.S. authorities to seek to bring Kwon to justice, accusing him of orchestrating mass fraud.
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The Montenegrin court’s decision, announced on August 1, marks a victory for South Korean prosecutors, who were pursuing Kwon since he fled in September 2022. A legal saga that has unfolded in the Balkan country since Kwon’s arrest at Podgorica airport in March 2023 has now concluded.
According to local media reportsThe judge overseeing the case ruled that South Korea’s extradition request took precedence over the U.S.’s. The reason was that South Korea’s request was filed first, in line with Montenegro’s existing extradition treaty with South Korea, which takes precedence over its agreement with the United States.
“This is the second legally binding judicial decision on the extradition of Do Kwon to South Korea,” Do Kwon’s lawyer, Goran Rodić, said in a statement. “It is fully in accordance with the law and international treaties governing the extradition of persons wanted for criminal prosecution or to serve a sentence.”
The sentence was handed down after Do Kwon and his business partner, Chang Joon, were condemned to four months in prison in Montenegro for trying to flee the country using false passports. After serving his sentence, Kwon was placed in a foreigners’ shelter near the capital, Podgorica, where he remained pending the outcome of the extradition proceedings. Chang Joon, on the other hand, was successfully extradited to South Korea.
Growing legal problems
Do Kwon’s legal troubles, however, extend far beyond Montenegro. In April, Bitcoinist reported that a New York jury found Kwon and Terraform Labs liable for civil fraud, agreeing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that they had misled investors. The company subsequently he agreed to pay a $4.5 billion settlement with the SEC.
Despite this civil settlement, the US government has persisted in demanding that Montenegro extradite Kwon and prosecute him for his misdeeds in the cryptocurrency market. However, this latest ruling by the Supreme Court of Montenegro represents a setback to the expectations of US authorities.
At the time of writing, the Luna Classic blockchain’s native token (LUNC) is trading at $0.00007379, down over 9% in the last 24 hours. On longer time frames, the token is also down 15% and 8% in the fourteen and thirty-day periods, respectively.
Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com
