Do Kwon wins appeal to avoid extradition weeks before trial in New York

An appeals court in Montenegro has overturned a previous ruling to extradite Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon to the US, the court said Tuesday. 

Tuesday’s update marks the latest development in the ongoing dispute involving the United States, Montenegro, South Korea and Kwon’s team to determine where Montenegro authorities will send the disgraced founder. Kwon has been in custody in Montenegro since March 2023. South Korea and the US are seeking extradition. 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil trial against Kwon is scheduled to kick off in New York on March 25, delayed from January. US District Judge Jed Rakoff said there will be no further delays and the trail will proceed with or without Kwon present. 

Kwon ’s US legal team last week told Rakoff in a letter that the extradition process was “meant to be resolved by this point.”

Read more: Do Kwon’s lawyers don’t expect a US extradition by March

His team said that the back and forth is due, in part, to confusion around the order in which Montenegro authorities received requests from the US and South Korea for Kwon’s extradition. 

The High Court in Montenegro ruled last month that Kwon should be extradited to the US because it believed that the US was the first to make the extradition request, but Goran Rodić, Kwon’s attorney in Montenegro, says the opposite is true. 

Read more: Do Kwon deposition in the US is ‘impossible,’ lawyers argue

“The Minister of Justice at the time the extradition requests were received in March and April 2023 publicly stated that the request from South Korea arrived first and that the most recent decision [made in February] of the High Court was erroneous,” Rodić wrote in a letter to Rakoff last week.

Tuesday’s statement did not provide an update on when a final decision on the extradition should be expected.

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