A court in the Balkan country of Montenegro has ruled that Do Kwon, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency firm Terraform Labs, should be extradited to the United States to face fraud charges rather than to his home country, South Korea, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Kwon’s lawyers have three days to appeal the ruling by the High Court in Podgorica, according to a spokesperson of the court, the newspaper said. The appeals court has the final say in the case.

Before he was nabbed in Montenegro in March last year, Kwon had been on the loose after fleeing Korea amid a probe in connection with the crash of Terraform Labs’ TerraUSD and Luna coins in May 2022. The crash was estimated to have wiped out nearly 50 trillion won (US$37 billion) in market value.

Kwon has been wanted by the U.S., where he was charged with fraud by federal prosecutors in New York.

South Korean prosecutors have also sought the extradition of Kwon on a set of allegations related to the crypto debacle.

TerraUSD was designed a
s a stablecoin, pegged to stable assets like the U.S. dollar. However, holders of TerraUSD and Luna lost most of their assets after the stablecoin plunged far below its $1 peg.

Source: Yonhap News Agency