Do Kwon’s Extradition from Montenegro Postponed Yet Again

Do Kwon’s extradition from Montenegro has been delayed yet again.

Just last week, the Balkan country’s appellate court issued what seemed to be a definitive decision to extradite Kwon to his native South Korea. But like past extradition decisions in Kwon’s case, it has been postponed by Montenegro’s Supreme Court at the request of the country’s top prosecutor, Minister of Justice Andrej Milović, according to local media reports.

Montenegro has unexpectedly found itself at the center of a diplomatic tug-of-war over the Terraform Labs co-founder. Both South Korea and the U.S. want to try Kwon for civil and criminal charges tied to the $40 billion implosion of the Terra/LUNA ecosystem in May 2022.

Both countries have issued competing extradition requests to Montenegro, where Kwon has been in custody since March 2023, when he was arrested for using a fake Costa Rican passport en route to Dubai while on the run.

Kwon wants to be tried in his native South Korea, which has lighter penalties for financial crimes, and successfully fought earlier decisions to extradite him to the U.S. last year. But the country’s courts – and apparently its prosecutors and government officials – are split over which request to honor.

Kwon’s Montenegrin defense attorney Goran Radić did not respond to CoinDesk’s requests for comment by press time, but told Vijesti, a Montenegrin newspaper, that the continuous delays and seven court decisions in Kwon’s case represent a “judicial disgrace.” Radic also told Vijesti that Milović had made an “illegal private promise” to extradite Kwon to the U.S. instead of South Korea, which issued its extradition request first.

Montenegro’s Prime Minister, Milojko Spajic, is a personal investor in Terraform Labs, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.