Montenegro’s Prime Minister personally invested in Do Kwon’s cryptocurrency

Author: Jasmina Kuzmanovic, Ava Benny-Morrison, Bloomberg; Translator: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

U.S. court documents show that Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic personally invested in the cryptocurrency held by Terraform Labs Pte years before the company collapsed.

The discovery raises questions about why the company's founder, Do Kwon, chose the small Balkan country as he tried to evade prosecution. He was jailed in Montenegro in March 2023 for using a fake passport and has been facing extradition requests from the United States and South Korea.

Spajic, a 36-year-old former banker and pro-Western politician, had previously said he made the investment through Singaporean firm Das Capital SG, where he is a partner.

Milojko s holdings grew to nearly $90 million at one point, according to Vijesti, an independent Montenegrin newspaper that first broke the news. Emails and calls to Podgorica s cabinet were not returned on Wednesday and Thursday. Spajic also declined to comment to Vijesti, the newspaper said.

The leaks come in the NATO member and EU candidate country, where the prime minister has led a fragile governing coalition since October. The opposition has called for Spajic s resignation.

The U.S. lawsuit against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon details the prime minister's investments before he took office. Spajic was identified as an early investor in April 2018 in a letter filed by SEC accountants analyzing Terraform crypto asset contracts.

Kwon faces prosecution in connection with the $40 billion plunge in the value of the TerraUSD stablecoin in 2022. The wealthy cryptocurrency company and Kwon were found personally liable for the fraud following a civil trial in New York in April. Terraform has agreed to pay $4.5 billion to settle with the SEC.

Spajic's LinkedIn page lists him as Milojko Mickey Spajic and shows he worked as a credit analyst and investor in Singapore between 2014 and 2020. He returned to Montenegro in late 2020 to serve as finance minister in the government that collapsed in February 2022.

Kwon is already serving a prison sentence there and has been held in a detention center for illegal aliens since March. Montenegro's justice minister favored extraditing the 32-year-old to the United States, while the court also supported his desire to extradite him to his native South Korea. After multiple rulings, Kwon's fate now rests once again in the hands of the High Court.