Montenegro court says Do Kwon should be extradited to US, WSJ reports

Montenegro court says Do Kwon should be extradited to US, WSJ report

Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terraforms Labs and a cryptocurrency entrepreneur, was declared by a Montenegrin court on Wednesday to be eligible for extradition to the United States instead of his native South Korea, where he would face fraud charges. output

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Do Kwon and Terraform of committing a multibillion-dollar fraud in 2023.

The collapse of "stablecoin" TerraUSD, which was intended to keep its price at $1, and the more conventional token Luna, which was closely associated with TerraUSD, are the reasons behind the SEC's civil lawsuit against Terraform and Kwon.

In May 2022, both cryptocurrencies experienced a loss of at least $40 billion due to TerraUSD's inability to sustain its $1 peg.

The SEC claimed that Terraform and Kwon had misled investors on the stability of TerraUSD and the way in which a well-known Korean mobile payment app settled transactions using the Terraform network. output 

Since his arrest in March of last year, Kwon has been detained in Montenegro and has refuted several accusations.

A federal judge postponed the SEC's trial last month so that Kwon may have more time to be extradited and attend. In an order, Manhattan's U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff rescheduled the trial from January 29 to March 25 without any further postponements—even in the event that Kwon is not extradited.