"Montenegro has recently been able to reach its first “final verdict” that was actually final enough to see Kwon actually board a plane, and he arrived in the United States to appear in court on January 2. This was celebrated by Prime Minister Milojko Spajić, who tweeted that he believed the extradition would “put an end to pre-election manipulations and attempts to stage a scandal”. Kwon is probably not as happy about the outcome as Spajić. Although he fought both extradition to the United States and South Korea, he seemed particularly opposed to the idea of winding up in the United States, with his lawyers at one point arguing that Montenegrin courts had falsified information so as to suggest that the United States requested Kwon's extradition before South Korea, and stating that the facts “absolutely and one hundred percent give priority to Korea.” He’d tried again to halt this extradition, too, by again claiming that Minister of Justice Bojan Božović had illegally granted it, but to no avail.

The eight fraud, market manipulation, and money laundering charges carry hefty maximum sentences, and Kwon stands accused of causing $40 billion in losses to at least hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million people. He’s entered a not guilty plea, as is to be expected this early on, and is likely to do a whole lot more sitting around in a jail cell as prosecutors and defense attorneys sift through discovery. “Sounds like we’re going to be backing up a U-Haul to the Southern District,” District Judge Paul Engelmayer joked about the apparent six terabytes of data, before scheduling the trial start date a whopping year away in January 2026 (while offering Kwon and his defense team the opportunity to request an earlier trial)."

https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-73/

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