YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) — Do Kwon, the international fugitive and founder of Terraform Labs, is set to be extradited to the United States. According to reports, Montenegro’s justice minister, Andrej Milovic, had no intention of sending him to his home country, South Korea. The development comes as a huge win for the US law enforcement authorities. There is an arrest warrant against Kwon since the collapse of the Terra ecosystem wiped off an estimated $60 billion from the cryptocurrency market.
For the uninitiated, Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023. The Terra founder tried to travel using fake documentation, including a forged Costa Rican passport.
Subsequently, on June 19, a Montenegro district court found Kwon and his colleague, Terraform’s former Chief Financial Officer, Han Chang-joon, guilty of the charges. As a result, the court sentenced him to 4 months in jail.
You can run, but you can’t hide, Do Kwon!
Last month, a Montenegrin court approved Do Knwon’s extradition. However, it left the decision to send him to South Korea or the United States up to Justice Minister Andrej Milovic.
Yesterday, on Dec. 6, Kwon made a last-minute appeal against the High Court of Podgorica ruling. He filed a motion in the Montenegrin Court of Appeal to overturn the decision.
“I do not accept the court’s decision to extradite me, so I do not submit to the court’s decision,”
his filing had said.
Meanwhile, the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice has until Dec. 15 to decide Kwon’s fate.
South Korea has also sought Kwon’s extradition from Montenegrin authorities to prosecute him on criminal charges related to the Terra Luna collapse.
Hours after his arrest in March, Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York filed a series of 8 fraud charges against Kwon. They indicted Kwon on eight fraud and market manipulation charges in March 2023. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also filed charges against him and his company.
While the Wall Street Journal suggests Milovic has already made up his mind, it is unlikely that he will announce it before the deadline.
