Kwon Do-hyung, a key figure in the collapse of the cryptocurrency 'Terra Luna', has been handed over to the United States.

Kwon's extradition to the US comes 1 year and 9 months after he was arrested at Podgorica International Airport

Kwon Do-hyung (32), a key figure in the cryptocurrency 'Terra·Luna' collapse, has been extradited to the United States.

According to local dailies Vijesti and Pobjeda on the 31st (local time), the Montenegro Police Agency announced that "today, at Podgorica International Airport, Kwon was handed over to officials from the US judicial authorities and FBI agents."

This marks 1 year and 9 months since Kwon was arrested at Podgorica International Airport, the capital of Montenegro, on March 23 last year. During this time, Kwon had persistently fought legal battles locally to be extradited to Korea, but ultimately to no avail.

After the Terra·Luna collapse in May 2022, Kwon, who was banned from leaving the country, left Korea in April and was on the run for 11 months before being arrested in Montenegro last March for possessing a forged Costa Rican passport, for which he was sentenced to four months in prison by a local court.

After serving his sentence, Kwon's detention was extended until a decision was made by the Montenegro court, as both the Korean and US governments simultaneously requested his extradition for financial fraud charges. Upon the expiration of his detention period, he was transferred to a foreigner detention center.

Initially, Kwon's extradition to Korea was decided by the Podgorica High Court, but in April, the Montenegro Supreme Court overturned this decision, ruling that it was at the discretion of the Minister of Justice.

Subsequently, Minister of Justice Bojan Bozovic decided against extraditing Kwon to Korea and opted to extradite him to the United States.

With Kwon's extradition to the US, it is expected that he may face a higher sentence than in Korea. In Korea, the maximum sentence for economic crimes is about 40 years, but in the US, a concurrent sentencing system is applied, where sentences are added for each individual crime.

Meanwhile, Kwon's legal representative, who has been pushing for his extradition to Korea, stated, "We are very disappointed with the decision. We will continue to fight for Kwon's rights in Korea."

On the other hand, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Kwon and Terraform Labs with "misleading statements to investors and operating an unregistered securities exchange" in March last year and filed a lawsuit in the Southern District Court of New York.

The SEC stated that Terraform Labs raised more than $200 million from investors through an unregistered digital asset securities offering from April 2018 to May 2022 and also misled investors about the stability of the Terra blockchain.

In addition, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also filed a lawsuit in the Southern District Court of New York in March last year, accusing Kwon and Terraform Labs of "fraudulently soliciting billions of dollars from investors through misleading statements about Terraform's digital assets."

The CFTC stated that Kwon and Terraform Labs misled investors about the stability of the Terra blockchain and the peg of the stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) to the US dollar, and also manipulated the price of the cryptocurrency Luna (LUNA) to the detriment of investors.

Kwon is expected to be sentenced in the US for these charges.