A ruling from the nation’s lower courts that would have affected Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform Labs, being extradited to the US or South Korea has been overturned by the Supreme Court of Montenegro.
The Supreme Court of Montenegro said in a notification dated April 5 that it had granted a request for a stay of proceedings against an earlier ruling by a lower court that would have permitted Kwon’s extradition to South Korea. The request’s prosecutors contended that an appellate court had broken the law when it dismissed Kwon’s legal team’s appeal, leaving the Supreme Court with the last say on the matter.
“In a situation where it is a matter of competing requests from two states for the extradition of the same person, and not a conflict of requests for the extradition of the same person, as found by the lower courts, the court’s obligation is to determine, in accordance with its powers, whether the legal conditions for extradition have been met the defendant in relation to each petition individually, after which the competent minister, not the court, decides on the permission and order of priority of extradition,” said the ruling.
The Terraform co-founder’s fate regarding his extradition to the United States or his home country of South Korea will be left up to the High Court in Podgorica, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Though he is being held in Montenegro since his arrest there in March 2023 for utilizing forged travel documents, he is facing criminal proceedings in both nations. According to reports, Kwon can still travel around Montenegro while the legal system considers his extradition request.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s attorneys proceeded with a jury trial against Terraform and the co-founder in March despite Kwon’s absence. During the trial, a few of Kwon’s earlier remarks were read into the record. At the time of publishing, the case was still pending.
Kwon is still in Montenegro, however Han Chang-joon, the former CFO of Terraform Labs, who was also detained in March 2023, was deported to South Korea. Hyun-seong Shin, the co-founder of Terraform Labs, is among the many people associated to the company that the South Korean authorities have charged.