Do Kwon to be extradited to South Korea after court reverses extradition to US

Quick Take

  • Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will be extradited to South Korea, a Montenegro court ruled Thursday. 
  • The move comes after a Montenegrin court overturned a prior decision regarding Kwon’s extradition to the United States.

A court in Montenegro decided Thursday that Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will be extradited to South Korea, according to local media

The move by the high court in Podgorica reverses a previous decision from another Montenegro court to extradite Do Kwon to the United States on Feb. 21, rejecting South Korea's bid to extradite the Terra LUNA +5.55% creator at the time. Kwon appealed his extradition to the U.S., in which his defense attorneys cited issues with the legal process, and the Montenegro Court of Appeals revoked his extradition to the U.S. on March 5, The Block previously reported. 

Earlier Thursday, South Korea's National Police agency sought the help of Interpol, the international law enforcement agency, to bring Kwon to the country from Montenegro, noting that South Korea requested his extradition before the U.S. 

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Kwon faces fraud charges related to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, where the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD crashed in May 2022 and caused the loss of $45 billion in market capitalization.


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About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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