Do Kwon Extradition To South Korea Challenged Again By U.S. Prosecutors
Terra founder Do Kwon has been caught in a legal battle between the United States and South Korea over which nation gets to extradite the crypto mogul to their turf.
In a March 8 statement to Bloomberg, the U.S. Department of Justice still expects to receive Kwon within U.S. borders, despite a high court decision overturning those plans.
“The United States continues to seek Kwon’s extradition in accordance with relevant international and bilateral agreements and Montenegrin law,” the Justice Department wrote. “The United States appreciates the cooperation of the Montenegrin authorities in ensuring that all individuals are subject to the rule of law.”
On the other hand, South Korea is also ramping up efforts to get Kwon extradited. On Thursday, the National Police Agency of South Korea sent a letter to the Secretariat of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) requesting aid in extraditing Kwon from a Montenegro jail.
This followed a High Court ruling earlier this week that revoked a prior ruling to extradite the crypto mogul to the United States, given misinformation about the order in which South Korea and the U.S. filed their petitions. Before this, the U.S. extradition had been approved twice by a lower court.
Both nations are seeking out Kwon on charges related to his now-defunct Terra blockchain, an algorithmic stablecoin network whose spectacular blowup wiped out $44 billion of investor value in May 2022. Contagion around the blowup triggered more high-profile collapses at firms like Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and FTX.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has since slapped Kwon with a litany of charges for deliberately defrauding investors, including by selling the platform’s native
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