Do Kwon’s lawyers don’t expect a US extradition by March

Do Kwon may miss the start of the March 25 trial in the SEC’s case against the former executive and Terraform Labs

article-image

JLStock/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Former Terraform CEO Do Kwon’s extradition battle continues.

In a letter to Judge Jed Rakoff, Kwon’s US attorneys warned that the co-founder of Terraform Labs may not be present for the start of the March 25 trial in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against Kwon and his former company.

The letter, penned by lawyers at Kaplan Hecker & Fink, said that Kwon’s extradition process was “meant to be resolved by this point.”

Both South Korea and the United States have requested to extradite the former executive. According to a declaration from Kwon’s lawyer in Montenegro, the co-founder wants to be extradited to South Korea since it’s his home country. 

The extradition, his US lawyers said, is taking “longer than expected because of unanticipated mistakes by the High Court tasked with deciding Mr. Kwon’s case.”

Read more: Do Kwon wins on second try to appeal extradition 

A declaration from Kwon’s lawyer, Goran Rodić, in Montenegro accompanied the letter filed by the law firm on Monday. He said that the High Court in Montenegro ruled that Kwon should be extradited to the US because it believed that the US was the first to make the extradition request. A fact, he added, that is inaccurate. 

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the court ruled in favor of extraditing Kwon to the US.

“The Minister of Justice at the time the extradition requests were received in March and April 2023 publicly stated that the request from South Korea arrived first and that the most recent decision [made in February] of the High Court was erroneous,” Rodić wrote.

Kwon’s team has since appealed the extradition decision, which could further delay any progress on extradition.

The former CEO was originally set to be extradited in November of last year. The High Court first declared that the minister of justice should decide where Kwon goes, though the decision was later vacated.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday

article-image

The government says Storm was a money-hungry aid to criminals; the defense says it’s not his fault that people used his code for illicit activities.

article-image

EigenLayer, Lido and Taiko are buying verifiable compute

article-image

Sam Altman sees our future through the World Orb

article-image

Few US politicians are this clearheaded about Bitcoin

article-image

Pump.fun seemed to kick off buybacks on Tuesday according to onchain analysis