Montenegro Justice Minister Andrej Milović has confirmed plans to extradite the beleaguered founder of Terraform Labs to the United States instead of his native country, South Korea. Kwon will answer to charges related to the dramatic and rapid implosion of his TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin and its sister Luna (LUNA) token in May 2022.
Do Kwon Extradition To U.S. Confirmed
Former crypto king Do Kwon is set to be extradited to the U.S. from Montenegro.
According to a Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal citing anonymous sources well-versed with the matter, Montenegrin Justice Minister Andrej Milović has privately indicated that he intends to send Kwon to the US. The Terra creator was captured in Montenegro in March and slapped with a four-month jail sentence for using forged travel documents. He faces charges in the U.S. and South Korea for his alleged role in the blowup of the Terra ecosystem, which wiped over $40 billion from the crypto market and sparked an unforgiving and widespread contagion.
Per the WSJ, Milović posited that the Kwon extradition announcement will be made public “in a timely manner.” Notably, his extradition was approved by a court in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica late last month, but Milović was expected to make the final decision on which country, between the U.S. and South Korea, would take precedence.
The Wall Street Journal report comes on the heels of Kwon launching his final attempt to appeal his extradition from Montenegro. Lawyers for the former head of Terraform Labs on Dec. 6 formally appealed the November ruling from the High Court of Podgorica.
If sent to the U.S., the South Korean national faces at least eight charges, including commodities fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and engage in market manipulation tied to his tenure at Terraform Labs. The SEC also charged him with “defrauding investors” in multibillion-dollar crypto schemes in February.
In South Korea, Kwon faces charges of violating capital-markets laws, manipulating transaction volumes by utilizing “trader bots”, and bribery. Prosecutors in the Southeast Asian nation have been pushing for the fallen crypto star to face criminal charges there, claiming it would be the most effective way of bringing justice to the victims.
With Do Kwon’s extradition from Montenegro to the U.S. now looming, he will possibly stand trial soon after. And just like in Sam Bankman-Fried’s blockbuster trial, U.S. prosecutors will most likely come out swinging.