Montenegro justice minister signs Do Kwon’s extradition to US

Montenegro’s minister of justice, Bojan Božović, signed the order to have Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon extradited to the U.S., the ministry announced on Friday.

This follows a decision from the Constitutional Court of Montenegro earlier this week, which rejected Kwon’s appeal against a previous Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court decided in September to nullify the Terra founder’s transfer to South Korea and determined that the country’s minister of justice would make his final extradition decision.

“Taking into account the Supreme Court's ruling, the Ministry of Justice has considered all the facts and circumstances and assessed criteria,” the ministry said in the announcement .

The assessment criteria include the severity of the criminal offenses, where the crime was committed, the order in which extradition requests were submitted, Kwon’s nationality and the possibility of further extradition to another country, according to the announcement.

Extradition ordeal

Kwon’s algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and sister cryptocurrency Luna collapsed in 2022, causing billions of dollars worth of losses to investors worldwide, leading authorities in South Korea, the U.S., and Interpol to seek his arrest. 

The Terraform Labs founder and former CEO was arrested in Montenegro in March last year for traveling with forged travel documents. Since being released from prison in March of this year, Kwon has faced an extradition deadlock in Montenegro, with courts deciding between requests from the U.S. and South Korea.

The High Court in Montenegro first ruled to extradite Kwon to the United States in February of this year to face legal consequences related to the Terra-Luna collapse of 2022. However, the court reversed the decision in early March and opted instead to extradite him to South Korea. This was followed by months of appeals, delays and inconsistent rulings.

The 33-year-old crypto mogul's attorneys sought extradition to his native South Korea, where the maximum sentence for financial criminals typically ranges from 30 to 40 years. The U.S., on the other hand, follows a principle where the court can impose consecutive sentences for each crime for which a defendant is found guilty.

Meanwhile, the extradition case of Kwon has also triggered political scandals in Montenegro, with former Justice Minister Andrej Milovic accusing Prime Minister Milojko Spajić of favoring extradition to South Korea due to financial ties with Kwon.