Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon and the firm’s former CFO Han Chong-joon will not be released from custody, after prosecutors won an appeal against the decision made earlier this month.
According to a report from Bloomberg, citing a court spokesperson Marija Rakovic, the Montenegrin high court annulled the lower court’s decision on Wednesday to grant the two South Korean nationals bail.
“The Basic court should now make another decision, taking into account what the High Court ruled,” Rakovic said. However, the matter can go back and forth between the two judges indefinitely, with no legal limit on how many motions can follow.
Kwon and Chong-joon are currently being tried on fraud charges for allegedly attempting to travel with falsified documents. The pair were arrested in March in the country’s capital Podgorica while attempting to board a plane to Dubai with what prosecutors allege were forged Costa Rican and Belgian passports.
In a hearing earlier this month, Kwon pled not guilty to the fraud charges, telling the court that his Costa Rican passport was authentic.
Kwon faces far more serious charges in the U.S. and South Korea in connection with an alleged fraudulent scheme that wiped $40 billion from the Terra ecosystem. Both countries are in the process of seeking his extradition from Montenegro.
Last year, South Korean prosecutors disclosed that Interpol had issued a red notice for Kwon’s arrest after the country requested assistance in tracing the Terra founder’s whereabouts. Kwon himself refuted claims that he was “on the run” in a tweet, and later on in an episode of Unchained where he dubbed reports of this nature “absolutely not true.”
Update, Thursday, May 25, 4:43 pm ET: This article was updated to note that the fraud charges are alleged.
