Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon will be extradited to his native South Korea, the Montenegro Appellate Court said in a news release.

The decision upholds a previous ruling and seems to resolve a lengthy legal dispute over whether Kwon would face charges in the US or in South Korea.

There has been no appeal against the decision, so Kwon’s extradition will take place promptly at South Korea’s request, according to the court, whose news release was machine translated from Croatian into English.

Both countries had long sought to extradite Kwon to face charges related to the May 2022 collapse of his so-called algorithmic stablecoin, TerraUSD, and Luna, the token that backed it.

The crash of the $60 billion project resulted in tens of billions of dollars in investor losses.

In September of that year, a South Korean court issued a warrant for Kwon’s arrest and began a months-long manhunt involving Interpol.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon in February 2023 with orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto fraud, followed the next month by the US Justice Department filing criminal charges against him.

Kwon surfaced in Montenegro in April 2023 and was ordered detained after he attempted to use a false passport to escape to Dubai.

This April, a US court found Terraform Labs and Kwon liable for fraud, and in June, Terraform agreed to pay the SEC $4.47 billion in penalties, and Kwon another $204 million, DL News reported.

Terraform subsequently ended its operations.

Crypto market movers

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Mike Millard is DL News’ Weekend Editor. Got a tip? Email him at mike@dlnews.com.