Montenegro’s Minister of Justice, Bojan Božović, stated in a declaration he authorized the Terraform creator’s extradition to the U.S. instead of South Korea.
Dec 27, 2024, 7:18 p.m. UTC
Terraform developer Do Kwon will be extradited to the U.S., Montenegrin Justice Minister Bojan Božović stated Friday.
The U.S. and South Korean federal governments have actually both looked for to take custody of Kwon to deal with criminal charges associated with the collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin Terra/Luna system in 2022, which started a series of prominent collapses consisting of that of FTX.
Kwon, who was detained in Montenegro in March of 2023 and sentenced to a couple of months in jail over passport forgery charges, has actually been battling his extradition to the U.S. for more than a year. Different courts in the nation have actually ruled in favor of the U.S. or South Korea taking custody of the one-time crypto executive.
In his declaration on Friday, Božović stated his choice followed the nation’s Supreme Court judgment that the conditions for authorizing an extradition had actually been fulfilled.
“Bearing in mind the decision of the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice thought about all the realities and scenarios and examined requirements such as the gravity of the criminal acts, the location of execution, the order of submission of the demand, the citizenship of the asked for individual, the possibility of additional extradition to another nation, in addition to other situations,” the declaration stated.
The U.S. quote satisfied these requirements, the declaration stated.
Friday’s statement is simply the most recent in a string of back-and-forth choices about where Kwon ought to be sent out. The Appellate Court of Montenegro ruled in August of this year that Kwon need to go to South Korea.
The legal fallout for Terra continues in the U.S. too; recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled charges with Tai Mo Shan, a subsidiary of Jump Crypto, declaring Tai Mo Shan offered LUNA as a security. The business will pay $123 million as part of the settlement.
Editor’s note: The Montenegrin federal government’s declaration was equated into English.
Nikhilesh De
Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk’s handling editor for international policy and guideline, covering regulators, legislators and organizations. When he’s not reporting on digital properties and policy, he can be discovered appreciating Amtrak or developing LEGO trains. He owns < < $50 in BTC and < < $20 in ETH. He was called the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers' Journalist of the Year in 2020.
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