Terraform Labs co-founder, Do Kwon, may not be extradited to the United States in time for the firm’s trial with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to his legal representatives.
In filings made on February 26 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, David Patton from Kaplan Hecker & Fink stated that Kwon is “unlikely to be extradited before the end of March” from Montenegro, where he has been since March 2023. The lawyer explained that Kwon’s team had expected him to have already been extradited to the U.S., but “unforeseen errors” have slowed down the process.
Patton said, “Kwon will likely not be present or able to attend at least the beginning of the trial scheduled to start on March 25, 2024. We provide this information as a status update for the Court… and we will not request any adjournment of the trial date, regardless of the timing of Mr. Kwon’s eventual extradition.”
Goran Rodic, who represents Kwon in legal proceedings in Montenegro, stated that the country’s High Court made a ruling on February 21 to extradite the Terraform co-founder to the U.S. based on incorrect information. According to Rodic, the Montenegrin court ruled on the basis that the U.S. filed for extradition before South Korea, when in fact, the opposite was true.
“We have appealed the High Court’s decision on February 21, 2024, due to the illegality of the High Court’s decision to order his extradition to the United States,” said Rodic. “The ‘summary’ process has taken much longer than we anticipated initially because of the numerous unexpected errors made by the lower court. At this point, I do not expect Mr. Kwon to be extradited to either South Korea or the United States before the end of March.”
The filings by the lawyers suggested that the United States is likely to win the extradition battle with South Korea. Kwon was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 for using forged travel documents and has remained in the country for approximately a year as extradition requests were processed. His whereabouts were largely unknown between the collapse of Terra in May 2022 and his arrest.
The SEC filed a lawsuit against Kwon and Terraform in February 2023, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged the Terra co-founder with eight criminal counts in March 2023, shortly after his arrest. Kwon and Terraform were accused of orchestrating a “multibillion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud” related to the offering of TerraUSD (UST) and Terra (LUNA).
Judge Jed Rakoff, who is overseeing the civil case, granted summary judgment in December 2023 in favor of the SEC over Terraform’s alleged offering of unregistered securities. The trial date has already been postponed to potentially accommodate Kwon but is likely to commence on March 25. Former U.S. President Donald Trump will also appear in the same court district on the same day for his first criminal trial.
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