(Adds quotes, details, changes dateline to Podgorica)
PODGORICA, March 29 (Reuters) - South Korea and the U.S.
are seeking the extradition of Do Kwon, an international
fugitive accused of a multibillion-dollar fraud, and another
suspect arrested in Montenegro last week, the Montenegrin
Justice Minister Marko Kovac said on Wednesday.
Do Kwon, a South Korean national, is a cryptocurrency
entrepreneur and former CEO of South Korea-based Terraform Labs,
the company behind the stablecoin TerraUSD that collapsed in May
2022 and roiled cryptocurrency markets.
A U.S. indictment announced last week charged Do Kwon, who
co-founded Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna
currencies, with two counts each of securities fraud, wire
fraud, commodities fraud and conspiracy.
He presided over the two digital currencies that lost an
estimated $40 billion or more last year. South Korean
authorities issued an arrest warrant for him last September.
"The extradition of Do Kwon (and the other suspect)... has
been officially requested" by South Korea and the United States
had asked for Do Kwon's extradition as well, Kovac told a news
conference in the capital Podgorica.
But Kovac said the two had been charged in Montenegro with
forging documents and would be extradited only after a trial and
any sentence served in the small Adriatic republic.
Do Kwon and the second suspect - identified as Hon Chang
Joon in a Montenegrin police statement - were detained on March
23 at Podgorica airport as they tried to board a flight to
Dubai, according to Kovac.
Montenegrin police charged the two with forging official
documents after police said they had found doctored Costa Rican
passports, a separate set of Belgian passports, laptop computers
and other devices in their luggage.
Kovac said the South Korean and U.S. extradition
requests also called for the handover of the computers.
A court in Podgorica ordered them placed in 30-day pre-trial
detention.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic and Stevo Vasiljevic; editing
by Jan Harvey and Mark Heinrich)
