A court in Montenegro ruled Thursday that Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will be extradited to his native South Korea to face criminal charges regarding the May 2022 multibillion-dollar blow-up of the Terra ecosystem.
The saga of Terra creator Do Kwon continues to unfold as a Montenegrin high court ruled on March 7 that he can be deported to his home country, South Korea, after serving time at Spuž prison near Podgorica, according to a local news report.
The decision by Montenegro’s High Court reverses a previous ruling from another court to extradite the South Korean national to the United States. Kwon successfully appealed his deportation to America, in which his legal team highlighted issues with the legal process, and the Montenegro Court of Appeals revoked his extradition to the U.S. on March 5, as ZyCrypto reported.
Since his detention in Montenegro on charges of attempting to travel to Dubai using falsified official documents, both the U.S. and South Korea have been jockeying for the chance to extradite him.
Both countries sought his extradition to face fraud charges relating to the spectacular implosion of Terraform’s algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its sister token LUNA in 2022, which thrust the market into a wintry freeze during which multiple crypto companies with exposure to Terra were forced to declare bankruptcy.
On Thursday, South Korea’s National Police Agency requested Interpol’s help to move Kwon from Montenegro to the nation. Kwon’s former associate and Terra executive, Han Chang-joon, was also extradited to South Korea in February. Kwon is being charged with violating capital markets laws in the Southeast Asian nation. If found guilty, he could spend over four decades in prison.
Besides facing a federal criminal trial in New York, Kwon is also mired in a legal skirmish with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The SEC trial is scheduled to commence later this month in his absence.
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