Montenegro court suspends crypto fugitive’s extradition

guardian.ng:

Montenegro’s top court on Friday suspended the extradition of crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon either to South Korea or the United States, where he is wanted over the multibillion-dollar collapse of the Terraform Labs company.

For months, Seoul and Washington have been seeking the South Korean’s extradition for his suspected role in a fraud linked to his company’s failure, which wiped out about $40 billion of investors’ money and shook global crypto markets.

In September, Montenegro’s Supreme Court ruled that the conditions of Kwon’s extradition to South Korea and the US were met.

But it left to the justice minister to make the final decision over the matter, including on the country of extradition.

Meanwhile, Kwon appealed the extradition ruling with the Constitutional Court.

The latter said in a statement on Friday that Kwon’s “extradition is suspended until … the final decision of the Constitutional Court is reached”.

It prompted the justice ministry to issue a statement urging the court to decide over the “complex case … as soon as possible”.

Friday’s ruling was another in a series of dizzying court decisions that has seen earlier extradition requests approved and later rescinded following the entrepreneur’s arrest in Montenegro in March 2023.

The crypto tycoon, whose real name is Kwon Do-hyung, had been on the run for months after fleeing South Korea and then Singapore before the company’s crash in 2022.

The company’s TerraUSD was marketed as a “stablecoin”, a token that is pegged to stable assets such as the US dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations.

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Do Kwon successfully marketed them as the next big thing in crypto, attracting billions in investments and global hype.

But