Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon Denied Bail by Montenegro High Court – According to reports, the bail application of Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform Labs, has been invalidated by a judge in the high court of Montenegro. Kwon was detained on March 23, 2023, for providing false identification while boarding a flight to Dubai with a companion.
Following his arrest at Podgorica airport, Kwon has been held in custody in the capital of Montenegro for the past 62 days. He and his accomplice Han Chong-joon were allegedly trying to leave Montenegro for Dubai. Nevertheless, their intentions were foiled when it was revealed that Kwon possessed counterfeit identification papers.
The arrest and subsequent detention of Kwon in Podgorica were confirmed by Montenegro’s interior minister, Filip Adzic. Since that time, Kwon has been confined within Montenegro’s prisons, where disturbing accounts of inmate mistreatment and the deteriorating condition of prison facilities have surfaced.
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In early May, there was a flicker of hope when the lower court in Montenegro authorized Kwon and Chong-joon to attain their freedom by posting bail worth $430,500. Unfortunately, this optimism was swiftly dashed when news broke on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, that a higher court had unequivocally invalidated the bail decision made by the lower court.
On Wednesday morning, Bloomberg journalists received firsthand information from Marija Rakovic, a spokesperson for the court. In addition to Kwon’s ongoing legal troubles in Podgorica, the co-founder of Terraform Labs is also confronted with extradition requests from both the United States and South Korea.
A report published in late March disclosed that Montenegro had purportedly opted to postpone Kwon’s extradition until he had undergone a trial and received fair legal proceedings. “The basic court should now make another decision, taking into account what the high court ruled,” Rakovic informed Bloomberg during their conversation on Wednesday.
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This development comes in the wake of a Seoul court granting permission for the confiscation of Kwon’s assets, valued at $176 million. Furthermore, there are concerns that the co-founder of Terraform Labs might have concealed $100 million in a Swiss bank account. Similar to Sam Bankman-Fried, the discredited co-founder of FTX, Kwon seems to have possessed abundant financial means to support his expensive legal defenses up to this point.