PODGORICA, Montenegro — Montenegro approved the extradition to the United States of a South Korean tycoon nicknamed “the king of cryptocurrencies”the Justice Ministry of this Balkan country said on Friday.
Minister Bojan Bozovic issued a statement authorizing the surrender of Do Kwon, the founder of Singapore crypto company Terraform Labs who was arrested in Montenegro last year, according to the ministry.
It was unclear when Kwon would be sent to the United States.
The decision follows a months-long legal saga in Do Kwon’s case. Both South Korea and the United States requested Do Kwon’s extradition and various courts in Montenegro over the past months have issued and overturned several decisions to extradite Kwon to the United States or South Korea.
The Justice Ministry’s statement cites the latest decision of the Supreme Court of Montenegro, according to which the conditions are met for Kwon to be extradited to one of the two countries and that the final decision rests with the Minister of Justice.
The ministry said Friday that more legal criteria favored extradition to the United States.
Kwon’s lawyers in Montenegro said they learned of the decision through the media and that their client could not be extradited until they received the decision.
“Behind this illegal behavior of the minister is the fact that the courts, on two occasions… took the decision to extradite Do Kwon to South Korea,” lawyers Goran Rodić and Marija Radulović said in a press release.
Kwon was charged with fraud in the United States by federal prosecutors in New York over a $40 billion crash of Terraform Labs’ cryptocurrency that devastated retail investors around the world.
He and another South Korean arrested in Montenegro while attempting to leave for Dubai, United Arab Emirates, using fake Costa Rican passports. Kwon served a prison sentence in Montenegro for using a false passport.
Kwon and five others linked to Terraform were wanted on allegations of fraud and financial crimes related to the implosion of its digital currencies in May 2022.
TerraUSD was designed as a “stablecoin,” a currency pegged to stable assets like the dollar to avoid drastic price fluctuations. However, around $40 billion in market value was wiped out for holders of TerraUSD and its floating sister coin, Luna, after the stablecoin plunged well below its $1 peg.
