The court in Podgorica announced that the legal requirements have been met for the extradition of the founder of Terra and one of the biggest crypto fraudsters – Do Kwon (Kwon Do-hyung). Requests for Do Kwon’s extradition have been sent by the United States and South Korea. Montenegrin Minister of Justice Andrej Milovich will have to decide where to send him.
Do Kwon and his associate Hon Chang-joon were arrested at Podgorica airport on March 23 this year. The two planned to travel to Dubai with forged travel documents. At that time at the airport, Montenegrin authorities were highly suspicious of the South Koreans; they were wanted by the US, Singapore and South Korea and yet they still tried to leave the country using Costa Rican passports. The two had no recorded entry into Montenegro. In addition to the passports with which they tried to leave the country, forged Belgian passports were also found in their luggage.
‘Do Kwon gave his consent to be extradited to the South Korean authorities according to a shortened procedure, but the Higher Court found that it should still be decided because several countries have asked for his extradition. The Justice Minister will decide which country has priority,” the Higher Court said in a press release.’, the Higher Court said in a press release.
Do Kwon is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for document forgery. Extradition will only be possible after Do Kwon has served his sentence.
Do Kwon is wanted by US authorities for alleged fraud he committed regarding aspects of the Terra blockchain and the way his technology was used. The United States charges the South Korean with several crimes, including: conspiracy to commit security fraud, wire fraud and price manipulation.
On the other hand, South Korean authorities are looking for him for violating the Law on Financial Investment Services in the capital market on three counts – felony fraud, unfair trading, fraud and violation of public offering.
Who is Do Kwon?
Kwon Do-hyung, better known as Do Kwon, is a former South Korean businessman and software engineer. He was born in Seoul, South Korea, on September 6, 1991. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Stanford University, he worked briefly as a software engineer in Microsoft and Apple.
In January 2016, Kwon returned to South Korea to develop and found his startup, Anyfi. In 2018, together with entrepreneur Daniel Shin, they founded Terraform Labs Pte. Later in 2018, Terraform Labs released the Luna cryptocurrency. Terraform began selling its stablecoin, TerraUSD (UST), in 2020.
TerraUSD and Luna collapsed in May 2022.
- On May 7, the price of TerraUSD (UST), which was supposed to be stable at $1, began to fluctuate and on May 9 it dropped to 35 cents.
- On May 12, the Luna companion token that was supposed to stabilize the price of UST, fell from $80 to just a few cents.
- In a 24-hour period, the Terra network stopped processing transactions on two occasions.
- The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has temporarily removed Luna and UST.
- The stablecoin’s market cap dropped from $18.6 billion to $2 billion in just one week.
- During the same period, Luna lost 100% of its value and their tokens, which were $80 each became worthless.
- In an August 2022 interview with Coinage, Do Kwon confirmed that Terra was a huge failure in terms of risk assessment.
The collapse of this ecosystem influenced many other cryptocurrencies in the market, causing losses worth $45 billion for many investors. When the project collapsed, many people lost their life savings.
