For months, Seoul and Washington have been seeking the South Korean’s extradition for his suspected role in fraud linked to his company’s dramatic collapse, which wiped out about US$40 billion of investors’ money and shook global crypto markets.

The Appeals Court of Montenegro said in a statement that it “rejected the appeal of Do Kwon’s lawyers and upheld the decision of the Podgorica High Court” to order his extradition.

It did not say when any transfer would be carried out.

The decision came more than a week after another court ruled against extraditing the Terraform founder to the US.

The crypto tycoon, whose real name is Kwon Do-hyung, had been on the run for months after fleeing South Korea and then Singapore before the company’s crash in 2022. He was arrested in Montenegro for using a fake passport in March last year.

Montenegro has already deported Kwon’s business partner – identified only by his initials JCH – to South Korea in early February.

The company’s TerraUSD was marketed as a “stablecoin”, a token that is pegged to stable assets such as the US dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations.

But despite billions in investments and global hype, TerraUSD and 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.

Cryptocurrencies have come under increasing scrutiny from regulators after a string of controversies during the past year, including the high-profile collapse of the exchange FTX.