An appeals court in Montenegro overturns an earlier ruling that approved the extradition of disgraced Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon to the United States.
Kwon faces criminal charges over the collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD and cryptocurrency Luna, which wiped out $40 billion in investor funds in 2022.
In March last year, Kwon was arrested in Montenegro after trying to board a flight to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a forged Costa Rican passport.
The US and South Korea both sought Kwon’s extradition, but a Montenegrin high court decided in February that the 32-year-old would be handed over only to US authorities.
In a new statement, the appeals court said it was withdrawing the February decision due to procedural issues surrounding which country first submitted the extradition request.
The first instance court says the extradition request from the US came on March 27, a day earlier before the request from South Korea arrived, but the appeals court says authorities from Kwon’s native country sent an email as early as March 24 sent requesting extradition.
“While deciding the appeal brought by the defendant’s lawyers, the panel of the Court of Appeal found that the decision was influenced by significant breaches of the criminal procedure provisions of Article 386(1)(8) and (9) of the CPC, because there are no clear and valid grounds for decisive facts regarding the letter requesting the order of arrival.”
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