Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon remained in Montenegro as the SEC trial kicked off in New York on March 25.
Lawyers for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) presented the image of Terraform Labs as a fraudulent empire in which “investors lost nearly everything” on the opening day of its civil trial.
According to a March 25 Reuters report, SEC attorney Devon Staren said in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that Terra was a “house of cards” that collapsed for investors in 2022. The civil trial kicked off more than a year after SEC officials filed a lawsuit against the blockchain firm in February 2023, alleging that Terra and its co-founder Do Kwon “orchestrat[ed] a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud.”
Kwon was not present on the first day of the trial. The Terraform Labs co-founder was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 for using falsified travel documents and sentenced to four months in prison. Though he reportedly had been released on March 23 while awaiting extradition to either the U.S. or his native South Korea, no decision had been made at the time of publication.
