Montenegro on Tuesday extradited a South Korean mogul known as “the cryptocurrency king” to the US, following a decision by its justice ministry earlier this month to accept a US request, while refusing a South Korean handover plea, the Balkan country’s authorities said.
Police said that officers of the National Central Bureau of Interpol in Montenegro handed over Do Kwon, the founder of the Singapore-based crypto firm Terraform Labs, to US FBI officers at the Podgorica airport border crossing.
“Today, on December 31, 2024, he was handed over to the competent law enforcement authorities of the United States of America and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” a police statement said.
Photo: AFP
The move follows a months-long legal saga in the case of Do Kwon. South Korea and the US had each requested Do Kwon’s extradition, and various courts in Montenegro over the past months had brought and overturned multiple rulings on whether to extradite Kwon to the US or his native South Korea.
He and another South Korean were arrested in Montenegro in March last year while trying to depart for Dubai, United Arab Emirates, using fake Costa Rican passports.
Kwon has served a prison term in Montenegro for using a fake passport.
Kwon was charged in the US with fraud by federal prosecutors in New York over a US$40 billion crash of Terraform Labs’ cryptocurrency, which devastated retail investors around the world.
Kwon and five others connected to Terraform had been wanted on allegations of fraud and financial crimes in relation to its sudden collapse in May 2022.
TerraUSD was designed as a “stablecoin,” a currency that is pegged to stable assets like the US dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices.
However, about US$40 billion in market value was erased for the holders of terraUSD and its floating sister currency, luna, after the stablecoin plunged far below its US$1 peg.
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