Montenegro: 'Crypto King' will not be extradited to South Korea

(Patria) - The Supreme Court of Montenegro overturned the extradition rulings for the "crypto king" Do Kwon to South Korea and returned the case to the High Court for reconsideration.

In this way, the request for the protection of legality by the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office was granted, and the decisions of the High Court in Podgorica and the Court of Appeal of Montenegro were annulled, the Supreme Court announced.

"In a situation where there is a competition of requests from two countries for the extradition of the same person, the court's obligation is to determine, in accordance with its powers, whether the legal conditions for the extradition of the accused are met in relation to each request individually, after which the competent minister, not the court, decides on the permission and order of priority of extradition," the statement said.

In this specific case, the first-instance court could not make a decision in an expedited procedure, and especially could not make a decision on extradition, which allows or denies extradition, which is decided by the Minister of Justice, as is rightly pointed out by the request for the protection of legality.

The Court of Appeal of Montenegro had an identical position.

South Korean citizen Do Kwon has been in a shelter for foreigners in Montenegro since March 23, after serving a four-month prison sentence to which he was sentenced for forging personal documents, after being arrested at Podgorica airport with a fake passport in March last year.

Do Kwon is accused of fraud in the crypto market worth more than 40 billion dollars, and the judicial authorities of the USA are also looking for him.