A Montenegro court on Wednesday denied Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon’s request to stay out of prison until his trial for allegedly using a fake passport.
A lower court had previously granted the creator of the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its former financial manager bail of 400,000 euros, or about $435,000, to remain under house arrest with police supervision until trial.
This decision was overturned after the prosecution appealed. The court that originally set the bail order will have to make another ruling, but there is no limit to the number of applications that can go between the lower and higher courts on a bail case, according to Bloomberg. Kwon, at least for now, is still in jail.
Kwon pleaded not guilty after his arrest for allegedly trying to use a fake Costa Rican passport to travel from Montenegro to Dubai. Kwon and Han Chang-joon were also holding what authorities described as fake Belgian passports as well as South Korean travel documents. Kwon has been evading authorities in several countries since South Korea issued an arrest warrant in September.
Prosecutors in both South Korea and the United States are looking to extradite him, but that must come after his trial in Montenegro. If he is tried in South Korea, he could face 40 years in prison — the longest sentence ever handed down in the country for financial crimes, the prosecutor in his case told CNN. Wall Street Journal.
New York federal prosecutors charged Kwon with conspiracy to defraud, commodity fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to engage in market manipulation.
