The U.S. district judge sentencing Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon for defrauding investors asked for answers to a number of questions ahead of Thursday’s hearing, court documents show.
Southern District of New York Judge Paul A. Engelmayer asked six questions, including whether Kwon’s victims will have their day in court and whether he will be able to avoid serving time if he is sent to South Korea, where he faces pending charges. The judge asked both parties to respond to his questions by December 10.
The collapse of Terraform, which had a market value of over $50 billion at its peak, was a pivotal moment for the crypto market downturn in 2022.
“Assuming Mr. Kwon’s transfer to an overseas detention facility to serve the second half of his sentence, what assurance would the United States have that he would not be released before the end of the prison term imposed by this Court?” asked the judge. He also asked whether Kwon’s victims “expressed an interest in being heard at sentencing?”
US federal prosecutors seek 12-year prison sentence for Kwon; his defense team asked for a five-year sentence.
Engelmayer also sought clarification on whether Kwon should get credit for about 17 months spent in custody in Montenegro, what specific criminal exposure he still faces in South Korea, how any victim compensation process would work and whether he is eligible for federal sentence reduction credits or should be subject to supervised release.
