South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon will be sent to the United States from Montenegro due to the collapse of two digital tokens – TerraUSD and Luna tokens.
For months the US and South Korea have sought Kwon’s extradition, saying fraud led to the failure of the company behind the tokens, which sank $40 billion (£31.7bn) from investors and global crypto markets.
Montenegro has no extradition treaties with the US or South Korea, so the issue had to be fought in the courts.
The decision marks the end of more than 18 months of decisions and postponements.
“The Minister of Justice, Bojan Bozovic, issued a decision authorizing the defendant, Kwon Do Hyung, to be extradited to the United States of America,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.
“It has been concluded that most of the conditions set by the law are in favor of the request for the return of the United States of America,” said the statement.
It added that Kwon had agreed to be extradited to South Korea and the United States.
In February, US regulators charged Kwon and his company Terraform Labs with “committing multibillion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud”.
“We suspect that Terraform and Do Kwon failed to provide the public with full, fair, and truthful disclosures as required by a number of crypto asset securities, particularly Luna and TerraUSD,” US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler. said a statement at the time.
The US alleges that Kwon repeatedly stated that the tokens would increase in value, and misled investors about the stability of TerraUSD.
Without billions of investments, TerraUSD and Luna entered the death stage in May 2022.
It has resulted in the sale of other major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.
Kwon was arrested in March 2023 when he tried to board a flight to Dubai at Podgorica Airport, in the capital of Montenegro.
In June 2023, he was sentenced to four months in prison in Montenegro after being found guilty of forging official documents.
Terraform Labs’ former chief financial officer, Hon Chang-joon, was extradited to South Korea in February, after serving four months in prison in Montenegro on fraud charges.
Source link
