Historical report: Originally published November 4, 2026, at 00:07:12 UTC+8 (November 3, 2026, at 16:07:12 UTC).
Tron founder Justin Sun said Tuesday that he had filed a motion seeking sanctions against World Liberty Financial, alleging that the Trump-linked DeFi project failed to disclose its United Arab Emirates citizenship until months into their legal dispute.
The motion adds a jurisdictional dispute to a conflict over Sun’s WLFI holdings. Sun says he invested $45 million in the tokens. He sued World Liberty in April, accusing it of fraud and unlawfully freezing his tokens. Those accusations remain allegations, not established findings in the supplied report.
Why the ownership disclosures matter
According to Sun, World Liberty’s initial court disclosure listed only one entity in its ownership chain and identified Florida as its sole citizenship. A subsequent filing identified 22 members in that chain and claimed citizenship in Florida, Delaware, Puerto Rico and the UAE.
Sun alleges that the late disclosure was intended to challenge the federal court’s jurisdiction and move the case out of open court. He said World Liberty had been “proudly” American when selling tokens but discovered its UAE roots “only when it needed a way out of an American federal courtroom.”
The legal issue concerns federal diversity jurisdiction. Sun argued that his case could proceed in federal court only if he and World Liberty were citizens of different jurisdictions. Because a company takes on its owners’ citizenship for these purposes, World Liberty’s UAE ties could undermine the court’s jurisdiction.
Sun said he planned to refile the lawsuit in California state court after the sanctions motion was resolved.
A contested token relationship
World Liberty countersued Sun in May, accusing him of conducting a “meritless PR stunt” against the Trump-family-backed crypto project after his tokens were frozen.
World Liberty debuted in October 2024 amid significant scrutiny over its association with President Donald Trump and his family. The dispute places the project’s ownership disclosures and treatment of a token holder alongside that political profile; the supplied report does not establish a ruling on Sun’s sanctions request or the underlying allegations.
At the time of the original report, WLFI traded near $0.051, compared with an all-time high of around $0.33, giving it a fully diluted valuation of approximately $5.1 billion. These are historical figures, not current market quotes.
