Do Kwon, co-founder of the cryptocurrency company Terraform Labs, due to the bankruptcy of which investors lost more than $40 billion, will be extradited to the United States, where he will be charged with fraud, Bloomberg reported. In March 2023, Kwon was arrested by Montenegrin police at Podgorica airport while trying to board a flight to Dubai using fake documents. In June 2023, he was found guilty of forgery of official documents and sentenced to four months in prison in Montenegro.
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For more than 18 months, the Montenegrin authorities could not decide on Kwon’s future fate, since requests for his extradition were sent by the United States and South Korea. Montenegro does not have an extradition treaty with either the United States or South Korea, so the issue in this case was resolved in court.
After a series of court rulings and their overturning, the Montenegro Court of Appeal in August this year upheld the previous decision to extradite Do Kwon to his homeland, South Korea. However, this decision was again canceled.
On Friday, the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice announced that the head of the department, Bojan Bozovic, has made a decision to approve the extradition of the accused Do Kwon to the United States of America. “It has been concluded that the majority of the criteria prescribed by law are favorable to the execution of an extradition request from the competent authorities of the United States of America,” the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice said in a statement. It also said Kwon has agreed to be extradited to both South Korea and the United States, although it was previously announced that he would prefer to be tried in South Korea because he would face harsher penalties for the offense in the United States.
In February 2023, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it was suing Terraform Labs and Do Kwon for a massive “cryptocurrency asset fraud.” To settle the case with the SEC, the cryptocurrency company agreed to pay $4.5 billion.