- Do Kwon has been sentenced to four months in prison in Montenegro for document forgery
- Kwon will spend just weeks in jail after time served was taken into account
- An extradition battle between the US and South Korea is ongoing
Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon has received a four-month jail sentence from a Montenegro court following a conviction for document forgery. The verdict was announced on Monday by a Basic Court in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, a day after Kwon had claimed that he didn’t know the passport was fake. The court specified that the time already spent in detention will be counted towards the overall sentence, meaning that Kwon will face around a month’s detention while the extradition battle for him ramps up.
Fake Passports Bite Kwon
Do Kwon was apprehended in March, along with another Terra executive named Han Chang-Joon, in Montenegro on charges of possessing counterfeit documents in the form of fake Costa Rican and Belgian passports. The pair were trying to leave for Dubai, where they had previously stayed while being on the run from South Korean officials when they were apprehended for using the counterfeit documents.
Kwon was told he would face six months in “extradition custody” alongside any potential jail term due to the battle between US and South Korean authorities to try him in their country, with both countries wanting to try him on a raft of financial crimes; the SEC has accused him of “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud” while South Korean authorities want to speak to him regarding violation of capital market rules.
Montenegrin authorities are believed to favor the South Korean claim as the stronger one because this is Kwon’s birth country, and Kwon is yet to publicly specify a preference for one over the other.
Kwon’s associate, Han Chang-Joon, was also jailed for four months under the same terms.
