KEY POINTS
- South Korea's justice minister said the country was waiting for Montenegro to extradite Kwon
- His lawyer said it was "likely" Kwon will be handed over to his home country
- An appeals court reversed an earlier decision to get Kwon to the U.S.
The founder of bankrupt blockchain protocol and payment platform Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, will "likely" be extradited to South Korea after a Montenegro court overturned an earlier decision to extradite the disgraced crypto mogul to the United States.
South Korean Justice Minister Park Sung-jae said Friday that the country is waiting for Montenegro to extradite Kwon, Reuters reported. While the Balkan nation had yet to contact Seoul, Park said his ministry will take measures once an official notice is delivered.
Montenegro's news service Vijesti first reported about the development, saying the High Court in Podgorica made the decision to extradite Kwon to his home country. Kwon's attorney has also informed CoinDesk that it was "likely" his client will be extradited to South Korea after March 23.
"The decision agrees with the evidence in the case files. Kwon finishes his sentence on March 23 and will be extradited after that. That's all I can say now," Kwon's attorney in Montenegro, Goran Rodic, said via text messaging.
The news comes just two days after the Appellate Court of Montenegro said it "accepted the appeal of the defendant Kwon Do Hyeong's (Do Kwon) defense attorneys, annulled the decision of the High Court in Podgorica Kv. No. 146/24 dated February 20, 2024, and returned the case to the first instance to the court for retrial and decision."
In its decision, the court said it found "no clear and valid reasons for decisive facts regarding the order of arrival of requests" for extradition lodged by the U.S.
South Korea has been grinding to get Kwon back home to face charges related to the May 2022 collapse of his massive crypto enterprise. About a month after Kwon was arrested in Montenegro for faking documents, South Korean authorities immediately moved to block the fallen crypto boss from accessing his cryptocurrencies believed to be held by Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume.
The country also seized millions worth of real estate and other assets from eight employees of Terraform Labs that were allegedly connected to the issues the crypto business faced.
South Korean prosecutors previously said Kwon may face over 40 years behind bars if he is convicted of charges filed against him in the country. They believe prosecuting the crypto magnate in his home country would be "the most efficient way of bringing justice" to victims of the Terra ecosystem's spectacular fall from grace.
