Terra founder Do Kwon denied forging documents in a trial held at the Podgorica District Court on Friday, South Korean media Segye Ilbo reported.
“I filled out all the documents and received a Costa Rican passport through an agency in Singapore recommended by a friend,” Kwon told the Judge at the hearing.
When pressed for details on the agency that issued the passport, Kwon said the agency’s name was in Chinese and he could not “remember exactly.” Still, he claimed to have been unaware that the travel document was actually fake.
“I traveled all over the world with a Costa Rican passport. If I had suspected it was a fake passport, I would not have traveled to many countries,” he said.
Kwon testified alongside his colleague Han Chong-Joon, the former chief financial officer of Terraform Labs. The two were arrested in March at Podgorica airport after attempting to board a plane to Dubai using falsified travel documents.
Although the pair have been released on bail, they have been ordered to remain in custody until the Montenegro court processes extradition requests for Kwon from both South Korea and the U.S.
Kwon has also been accused of making financial contributions to Montenegro’s top candidate for prime minister Milojko Spajić, although the latter has denied any association with the former Terra CEO.
Montenegro’s Interior Minister Filip Adžić claims that the laptop that authorities seized from Kwon bears evidence of the political funding, which came in at a “level that cannot be ignored.”
