Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will be sent to his home country, South Korea, to be tried for the multi-billion-dollar implosion of his Terra-Luna crypto enterprise in May 2022.

Montenegro’s Appellate Court upheld a ruling that South Korea’s extradition request for the embattled crypto entrepreneur has priority over a similar request by US prosecutors. 

Do Kwon To Be Handed To South Korea

Do Kwon previously managed to successfully appeal against extradition to the United States, with a Montenegrin court acknowledging that South Korea’s request for extradition was submitted before that of the US.

In light of this, the Appellate Court of Montenegro indicated on March 20 that it had upheld a decision from the country’s high court allowing the Terra creator to be deported to his native South Korea.

“Deciding on the appeal of the defendant’s counsel, the panel of the Court of Appeals assessed that the first-instance court had correctly established that the request of the Republic of South Korea arrived earlier in the order of arrival compared to the request of the USA,” the appellate court said on Wednesday. “[It] made a decision allowing the extradition of the accused Do Kwon to South Korea.” 

In its heyday, Terra was very popular in the decentralized finance sector and was the second-largest blockchain, only trailing Ethereum. Additionally, the network’s governance token, LUNA, had secured a spot among the top 10 cryptocurrencies.

However, the Terra ecosystem imploded in 2022 — erasing over $40 billion in investors’ money and sparking a vicious bear market. Many crypto projects with exposure to Terra were later forced to declare bankruptcy.

Kwon Facing 40 Years In South Korean Prison

Kwon was arrested in Montenegro while trying to flee to Dubai using falsified travel documents. He has since been slapped with a string of charges by authorities in both South Korea and the U.S. 

After Montenegro approved his extradition to the U.S. in November, his defense team was able to bar the deportation from the Balkan country. The Wednesday decision now seals his extradition to South Korea, preventing the U.S. or Kwon from appealing the decision further.

If found guilty, Kwon could be facing an unprecedented sentence for a financial crime in the Asian nation. South Korean prosecutor Dan Sunghan revealed last year that the disgraced crypto mogul could spend up to 40 years in prison.

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ March 21, 2024 6:26 pm