South Korean boss Do Kwon extradited to US

South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon will be extradited 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 called for Kwon’s extradition, claiming fraud led to the failure of the company behind the tokens, which sunk around $40bn (£31.7bn) from investors and rocked the global cryptocurrency markets.

Montenegro has no extradition treaties with the US or South Korea, so the matter had to be fought out in the courts.

The decision marks the end of more than 18 months of rulings and appeals.

“The Minister of Justice, Bojan Bozovic, issued a decision approving the extradition of the accused, Kwon Do Hyung, to the United States of America,” the Ministry of Justice announced in a statement.

“It was concluded that most of the criteria provided by law favor the extradition request from the competent authorities of the United States of America,” the statement said.

It added that Kwon had consented to be extradited to both South Korea and the United States.

In February, US regulators accused Kwon and his company Terraform Labs of “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency securities fraud”.

“We allege that Terraform and Do Kwon failed to provide the public with full, fair and truthful disclosure as required for a number of crypto-active securities, particularly Luna and TerraUSD,” Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman ) from the USA, Gary Gensler. said in a statement at the time.

The US alleged that Kwon repeatedly claimed that the tokens would increase in value and misled investors about the stability of TerraUSD.

Despite billions in investment, TerraUSD and Luna entered a death spiral in May 2022.

It triggered a selloff in other major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.

Kwon was arrested in March 2023 while trying to board a flight to Dubai at Podgorica Airport in the Montenegrin capital.

In June 2023, he was sentenced to four months in prison in Montenegro for forging official documents.

Former Terraform Labs chief financial officer Hon Chang-joon was extradited to South Korea in February after serving four months in prison in Montenegro on fraud charges.