Do Kwon's extradition to South Korea and US approved by Montenegro court

The Higher Court in Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro, has approved the extradition of Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon based on requests from South Korea and the United States.

The extradition is sought for charges related to financial crimes in both countries, the court said Friday. Kwon has agreed to be extradited to South Korea, but the Minister of Justice of Montenegro will make a final decision on which country takes precedence for extradition, the court added.

If the minister approves, Kwon will be extradited after serving a 4-month prison sentence in Montenegro for document forgery, the court said.

Kwon was initially arrested in Montenegro in March when charged with using a fake passport to attempt to leave the country. However, he was freed from jail pending trial after a court agreed to a $436,000 bail in May. Subsequently, in June, a Montenegro court sentenced him to four months in prison after finding him guilty of document forgery. Kwon appealed that court decision, lost the appeal, and was finally sentenced to four months in jail earlier this month.

Kwon was the focus of a worldwide search in September 2022 when global police body Interpol reportedly issued a so-called red notice for him, stemming from the May 2022 collapse of the two tokens he had created — TerraUSD and Luna — which wiped out some $40 billion of investor wealth in a few days.

In April of this year, Terraform's other co-founder, Daniel Shin, was indicted in South Korea for violating capital markets laws, leading to prosecutors freezing $185 million in assets. Shin, however, denied any involvement in the Terra collapse, asserting that he had left the company two years before it occurred.