The drama around Do Kwon, the Terraform Labs co-founder, just hit a new peak. He’s getting shipped off to the United States, facing charges that have the crypto community on edge. Since March 2023, Kwon’s been chilling in Montenegro, but it looks like his stay is about to get cut short.
So, here’s the lowdown: A news piece out of Montenegro on February 21 spilled the beans. The big wigs at the High Court of Podgorica decided, nah, we’re not sending him to South Korea; the U.S. gets him. This came after Kwon’s lawyers threw a Hail Mary, saying, “Hey, shouldn’t our Justice Minister call the shots here?” But the court wasn’t having any of it.
When’s Kwon jet-setting to the U.S.? That’s the million-dollar question. Post-Terra’s nosedive in May 2022, the guy’s been off the radar, popping up only when Montenegro’s cops nabbed him in March 2023 for toting around fake travel docs. He’s been warming a cell for four months and dealing with the whole extradition circus.
Now, for the juicy bits you won’t find just anywhere. The Montenegrin court was like, “Do Kwon, the crypto king, is U.S. bound because they want him for some serious financial shenanigans,” according to Pobjeda. They gave South Korea’s extradition plea the cold shoulder. The appeal court had to step in and tell the higher-ups to make a call between South Korea and the U.S.
Initially, the court figured, yeah, we can extradite him, leaving it to Justice Minister Andrej Milović to pick who gets Kwon. But then, twist! The appeal court said, “Hold up. Milović only gets a say in regular extradition stuff. Kwon’s agreed to go, so let’s speed this up.”
Kwon’s lawyer, Goran Rodić, was all, “Legally, he should be off to South Korea first,” citing all sorts of legal jargon and treaties with the U.S. But on the flip side, Milović was playing politics, hinting at the U.S. being their BFF and wanting to tighten those extradition treaty bonds.
Let’s not forget the drama at Podgorica airport on March 23 last year. Kwon and his buddy, Hon Chang Joon, were busted trying to fly to Dubai with fake Costa Rican passports. Cops found Belgian travel papers on them, too. In court, they claimed ignorance, saying they got those passports through a Singapore agency and had no clue they were fakes. Kwon even said they spotted errors in the Belgian passports but never used them because they trusted the agency too much after their Costa Rican passport application got approved.
That’s the scoop. Kwon’s extradition saga is more tangled than last year’s Christmas lights, but it looks like the U.S. is set to untangle it. Let’s see how this plays out.
