A court in Montenegro has sentenced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Do Kwon, who is charged in the US with a multibillion-dollar fraud, and his ally to four months in prison for using forged passports, local newspaper Vijesti reports.
A South Korean citizen, Do Kwon is the former CEO of South Korea-based Terraform Labs, the company behind the stablecoin TerraUSD that collapsed in May 2022, roiling cryptocurrency markets.
He was detained in March along with Han Chang-joon, Terraform Labs’ former finance officer, as they tried to board a flight to Dubai at the airport of Podgorica allegedly using fake Costa Rican passports and charged with forging official documents.
Authorities said Kwon and the other man were arrested at Podgorica Airport while trying to fly to Dubai using fake Costa Rican passports.
Both South Korea and the United States have requested Kwon’s extradition from Montenegro.
The courts in the country are yet to decide on those requests in separate proceedings.
The Basic Court in Podgorica, Montenegro’s capital, said on Monday that time already spent in detention since the pair’s arrest on March 23 will be included in the sentence, state RTCG television reported.
“The court found they were guilty of the criminal act of forging identification documents,” Kwon’s lawyer in Podgorica, Goran Rodic, said.
Rodic said he is yet to consult with his clients about further steps and a possible appeal.
South Korea asked Interpol in September to circulate a “red notice” asking the agency’s 195 member countries to find and apprehend Kwon.
The two are believed to have hidden in Serbia but moved to Montenegro after South Korean investigators tracked their whereabouts and asked Serbian authorities to detain them, the South Korean justice ministry said when the arrests were made.
Kwon and five others connected to Terraform are wanted on allegations of fraud and financial crimes in relation to the implosion of the firm’s digital currencies in May 2022.
TerraUSD was designed as a “stablecoin,” a currency that is pegged to stable assets like the US dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices.
However, about $US40 billion ($A58 billion) in market value was erased for the holders of TerraUSD and its floating sister currency, Luna, after it plunged far below its $US1 peg.
with AP