Montenegro will extradite to the United States South Korean cryptocurrency specialist Do Kwon, who is also wanted by Seoul for the multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy of his company, Terraform Labs, the Montenegrin Justice Ministry announced on Friday.For months, Seoul and Washington have been seeking the South Korean’s extradition for his suspected role in a fraud linked to his company’s failure, which wiped out about $40 billion of investors’ money and shook global crypto markets.”The Minister of Justice, Bojan Bozovic, issued a decision approving the extradition of the accused, Kwon Do Hyung, to the United States of America,” the Ministry of Justice announced, following a year and a half of dizzying court rulings and subsequent reversals regarding his extradition.”It was concluded that the majority of the criteria prescribed by law favour the extradition request from the competent authorities of the United States of America,” the Ministry added in a statement.The crypto tycoon was arrested in March 2023 at the airport in Podgorica, the Montenegrin capital, while preparing to board a flight to Dubai, in possession of a fake Costa Rican passport.Before his arrest, he had been on the run for months, fleeing South Korea and later Singapore, before his company went bankrupt in 2022.After a series of rulings by the Montenegrin courts, approving and then cancelling extradition requests, the country’s Constitutional Court lifted the final hurdle on Tuesday.”The Constitutional Court concluded that the procedure preceding the constitutional review was conducted in a manner that ensured the appellant’s right to a fair trial and did not raise concerns about a possible violation of the right to family life,” states the decision published on the Constitutional Court’s website on December 24th.The court also emphasized that Kwon, during the hearing, “personally consented to expedited extradition to both the Republic of South Korea and the United States.”Montenegro has already deported Kwon’s business partner — identified only by his initials J.C.H. — to South Korea in early February.Terraform Labs created a cryptocurrency called TerraUSD that was marketed as a “stablecoin”, a token that is pegged to stable assets such as the US dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations.Do Kwon successfully marketed them as the next big thing in crypto, attracting billions in investments and global hype.Media reports in South Korea described him as a “genius”.But despite billions in investments, TerraUSD and its sister token Luna went into a death spiral in May 2022.Experts said Kwon had set up a glorified Ponzi scheme, in which many investors lost their life savings.He left South Korea before the crash and spent months on the run.In January, Terraform Labs officially sought bankruptcy protection in the United States.The bankruptcy filing would allow Terraform “to execute on its business plan while navigating ongoing legal proceedings, including representative litigation pending in Singapore and US litigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission”, the company said in a statement.It said it also intended to “meet all financial obligations to employees and vendors”.Cryptocurrencies have come under increasing scrutiny from regulators after a string of controversies in recent years, including the high-profile collapse of the exchange FTX.

A weaker yen lifted Japanese equities on Friday, while Wall Street’s major indices slid in quiet holiday trading. Seoul was an outlier in Asia with shares plunging as South Korea’s political crisis deepened with a second presidential impeachment vote.US indices slid lower at the start of trading, with the Dow shedding 0.6 percent.”Holiday lethargy is to blame indirectly, yet a more direct weight is the modest weakness among the mega-cap stocks,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare.He also pointed to an increase in 10-year US Treasury bond yields to around 4.6 percent, which he noted is an increase of nearly 0.9 percentage points since the US Federal Reserve made its first interest rate cut in September.”The Fed doesn’t hold sway over longer-dated maturities like it does over shorter-dated securities, so the bump in rates at the back end of the curve is being watched with an anxious eye as a possible harbinger of a pickup in inflation and/or the budget deficit,” O’Hare said.Wall Street stocks took a knock earlier this month when the Fed indicated it would likely cut interest rates less than it had previously expected to, in part because of uncertainty tied to the stated intention of incoming president Donald Trump to raise tariffs, which could boost inflation that is already proving sticky.In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei index closed up nearly two percent, with the yen’s recent weakness proving a boon for major exporters. The yen hit 158.08 per US dollar on Thursday evening — its lowest in almost six months — following comments made by Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda that failed to give a clear signal on a possible interest rate increase next month.The BoJ left borrowing costs unchanged last week and warned of uncertainty over the economic policies of US president-elect Donald Trump.”Today, the yen looks stronger on the back of a freshly released set of stronger-than-expected data,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at Swissquote Bank.Recent data has showed Japan’s inflation rose for a second month in December, while industrial production declined less than expected in November and retail sales came in higher than estimated last month.Japan’s government also on Friday approved a record budget for the next fiscal year, ramping up spending on social welfare for its ageing population and on defence to tackle regional threats.In Seoul, the stock market closed down one percent after the won plunged to a nearly 16-year low of 1,487.03 against the dollar on Friday morning.South Korea is struggling to emerge from political turbulence in the wake of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration this month, which prompted his impeachment.Acting President Han Duck-soo was also impeached Friday in a vote that prompted governing party lawmakers to protest with angry chants and raised fists.South Korea’s business outlook for January fell in the Bank of Korea’s composite sentiment index, the biggest month-on-month slide since April 2020, according to data based on almost 3,300 firms released Friday.In Europe, Frankfurt’s DAX index rose after German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved parliament on Friday and confirmed the expected date for the early general election, emphasising the need for “political stability” in Europe’s largest economy.- Key figures around 1430 GMT -New York – Dow: DOWN 0.6 percent at 43,076.65New York – S&P 500: DOWN 0.6 percent at 5,999.29New York – Nasdaq Composite: DOWN 0.7 percent at 19,871.28London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.1 percent at 8,129.61Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.5 percent at 7,322.01Frankfurt – DAX: UP 0.4 percent at 19,937.72Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 1.8 percent at 40,281.16 points (close)Seoul – Kospi: DOWN 1.0 percent at 2,404.77 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 0.1 percent at 20,116.93 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.1 percent at 3,400.14 (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0431 from $1.0424 on ThursdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.2560 from $1.2526Dollar/yen: DOWN at 157.75 yen from 158.00 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 83.05 pence from 83.19 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 1.1 percent at $70.41 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 1.0 percent at $73.60 per barrelburs-rl/js