According to Agence France Presse, a court in Montenegro has decided to extend Do Kwon’s detention by six months pending trial and extradition.
Do Kwon, who was the CEO of Terraform Labs, has been detained in Montenegro since late March 2023 after being arrested at Podgorica Airport for carrying fake travel documents.
Currently, Do Kwon is facing two separate criminal cases in Montenegro, one related to the alleged possession of forged documents and the other related to the possibility of extradition.
According to media reports, both South Korea and the United States are trying to extradite Kwon due to suspicions that the individual is involved in a scam related to the massive collapse of Terraform Labs last year. This incident caused the loss of about 40 billion USD of investors and caused a tremor in the global cryptocurrency market.
Prior to that, Do Kwon founded Terraform Labs in South Korea, the company behind TerraUSD (UST), a stablecoin that is supposed to maintain a stable value on par with the USD. However, in May 2022, UST lost its stability and caused the collapse of the Terra ecosystem almost overnight, causing billions of dollars to disappear from the market.
After Terra collapsed, many other major players in the crypto industry such as Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi, and eventually FTX also struggled and failed.
In September 2022, a Korean court ordered Do Kwon’s arrest. At the same time, Interpol also issued a red notice about Kwon, asking law enforcement agencies around the world to arrest him immediately. After half a year on the run, Kwon was finally arrested in Montenegro on March 23.