Do Kwon... You talk about someone who has to have 100 lives it has to be him. If you are new to the space and are not aware Do Kwon was a cofounder of Terraform Labs and the figurehead of the entire LUNA ecosystem. When it comes to cut-and-dry cases in crypto he has been able to create a temple of what not to do as he managed to create a case against himself that is about as cut-and-dry as it could get. For a while, the biggest issue with him was that he was extremely hard to find because, after the collapse of the LUNA ecosystem, he took off and disappeared for a while. Since he couldn't be found well it made it impossible for the US to get a country to extradite him.

Once he was tracked down and arrested in Montenegro I figured that while he would fight extradition to the US eventually it would end up happening even if it took a year or so. I had no idea that while the US was itching to get him to the US and face the US judicial system South Korea beat the US to the punch by having their case against Kwan further along and playing the he is a citizen of South Korea and we have first dibs. This has resulted in back and forths in the Montenegro court system where they first had to decide who he would be extradited to and even then there was a series of ruling flipping between the US and South Korea before South Korea finally "won" the battle to get him or so we thought...

I did not have on my 2024 bingo card that Kwon would be released from jail during this ongoing court battle. After it had seemed like South Korea had "won" the right to have him extradited to their country to face charges there the Supreme Court for Montenegro stepped in and halted his extradition. Not only that though they released him from jail! What was surprising about this move is that he had already been in jail in Montenegro for trying to fly to Dubai, UAE on fake Costa Rican passports so the surrendering of his passport does not carry much weight in my opinion if he is trying to flee. In the latest ruling by the Montenegro Supreme Court, they have ordered the Lower Courts to redo the process of deciding which country he should be expedited to but also stated that at the end of this whole thing, the final decision lies with the Montenegro Justice Minister.

While this might be considered a "win" for Kwon it needs to be noted that his lawyers have argued for him to be extradited to South Korea because their white-collar crime punishments are weaker compared to the US. It likely does not help that Kwon and Terraform unlawfully offered and sold crypto securities by the SEC and that Terraform Labs and Kwan were also found liable for defrauding investors. For the US these decisions by a New York jury trial are huge in helping boost their claims to Kwon. It has also been mentioned, which is something I thought of, that it does not seem that the Montenegro Supreme Court wants to allow him to be extradited to South Korea and they would rather that he be extradited to the US.