South Korea defeats the United States in the Do Kwon extradition battle

A long court battle to extradite disgraced crypto tycoon Do Kwon appears to be over after a court decision on Thursday.

Montenegro’s Court of Appeal ruled that Kwon, founder of the defunct Terra blockchain, will be sent to South Korea to face trial.

Do Kwon goes to South Korea

The latest ruling reaffirms an earlier decision by a lower court, the Podgorica High Court, to send Kwon to his home country instead of the United States, which also sought his extradition. A statement on the website of the court in Podgorica confirmed that there was no appeal against the decision.

It can also be considered a victory for Kwon, as experts say the United States would likely have punished the billionaire far more harshly than his homeland.

“The United States probably has the largest number of victims in both numbers and dollars,” Swan Bitcoin CEO Terrence Yang said in March.

“It seems a little ridiculous that the Montenegrin court would extradite Do Kwon to South Korea, where he could be acquitted or get a comically light sentence unlike in the United States,” he continued.

After the latest decision, Do Kwon’s lawyer Gordin Rodic told Bloomberg that Montenegro would arrange Kwon’s extradition to South Korea “as soon as possible” with the assistance of the International Criminal Police (Interpol).

Since he was released from prison on bail in March, Kwon’s fate has bounced back and forth between the court in Montenegro amid debate over which country had the right to extradite him.

Originally slated for the United States, the ruling was overturned in early March as it emerged that South Korea had first requested his extradition. The Supreme Court of Montenegro later ruled again in favor of the US

Although numerous court rulings have overruled each other throughout the debacle, a final decision can only come from Montenegro’s Justice Minister Andrej Milovic.

Collapse of Earth

The Terra blockchain collapsed in May 2022 when the protocol’s algorithmic stablecoin mechanism destabilized. Combined losses in both TerraUSD (UST) tokens and the blockchain’s native LUNA token lost investors $44 billion.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subsequently sued Kwon and Terraform Labs, requesting that the group agree to pay $5.3 billion in fines for damages to investors.

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