Tron founder Justin Sun has sought court sanctions against World Liberty Financial and its lawyers, accusing the Trump family-backed crypto company of withholding information about its UAE ci
Tron founder Justin Sun has sought court sanctions against World Liberty Financial and its lawyers, accusing the Trump family-backed crypto company of withholding information about its UAE citizenship for months during their ongoing legal dispute.
SummaryIn a November 3 statement on X, Sun said his lawyers filed the motion after World Liberty amended its corporate ownership disclosure, raising questions about whether his lawsuit could proceed in California federal court.
Last night, my lawyers moved to sanction World Liberty Financial @worldlibertyfi for failing to disclose, until months into my litigation against the company, that it is a citizen of the UAE 🇦🇪 . #WLFI#USD1For those who are new to this dispute, I was one of World Liberty’s…
— H.E. Justin Sun 👨🚀 🌞 (@justinsuntron) November 3, 2026
The company initially identified Florida as its only jurisdiction of citizenship but later disclosed an ownership structure involving 22 entities and claimed citizenship in Florida, Delaware, Puerto Rico and the United Arab Emirates.
Sun alleges that the change came only after months of litigation and substantial legal expenses, during which World Liberty attempted to move the dispute into private arbitration.
According to Sun, World Liberty was required to identify its owners and their citizenship when the lawsuit began in April, allowing the court to determine whether it had jurisdiction over the case.
Its original filing identified only World Liberty itself and listed Florida as its sole citizenship. The company’s lawyers certified that they were “unaware of anyone else who needed to be disclosed,” Sun said.
Following an August court hearing, however, World Liberty submitted what Sun described as a sudden correction to its disclosure, identifying 22 entities in its ownership chain instead of just one.
The amended filing listed Florida, Delaware, Puerto Rico and the UAE as jurisdictions of citizenship, with World Liberty subsequently arguing that the federal court could no longer hear the case because foreign parties were involved on both sides.
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Sun, who is a foreign plaintiff, had filed the lawsuit under federal diversity jurisdiction, which generally allows certain disputes between parties from different jurisdictions to proceed in federal court.
He argued that World Liberty should have disclosed its foreign ownership earlier, particularly because the information was necessary to establish the court’s authority to hear the case.
According to Sun, if the company’s lawyers genuinely learned about its UAE citizenship only after submitting the original filing, then “either World Liberty’s lawyers failed to conduct appropriate diligence, or World Liberty did not give its lawyers a straight answer.”
He said his legal team sought an explanation for the discrepancy, but World Liberty “refused to tell us” how it had occurred.
The sanctions request follows an earlier disagreement over whether Sun’s claims should be heard publicly or resolved through arbitration.
World Liberty had asked the federal court to compel arbitration, a process that would move the relevant claims away from ordinary court proceedings.
Sun opposed the request, saying his legal team spent months and hundreds of thousands of dollars contesting the company’s position.
As previously reported by crypto.news, an August 20 hearing resulted in a partial procedural victory for Sun after the court determined that certain claims could remain in federal court while others would proceed through arbitration.
The judge instructed both parties to discuss which claims belonged in each process and submit a proposed agreement.
Less than a week later, on August 26, World Liberty filed its supplemental corporate citizenship disclosure.
The federal case subsequently entered a period of jurisdictional discovery, with a September 29 order staying proceedings until October 22 while the parties examined the ownership questions.
Sun now wants the court to hold World Liberty and its lawyers accountable for the alleged disclosure failures and the legal expenses incurred during the earlier proceedings.
The Tron founder said he intends to continue pursuing his original claims in California state court once the federal court resolves the sanctions motion.
His lawsuit stems from a dispute over WLFI tokens purchased under an investment agreement signed in November 2024.
Sun initially committed $30 million to the project before raising his total investment to $45 million, making him one of World Liberty’s earliest major investors.
In April, he sued World Liberty Financial, alleging that the company had fraudulently induced his investment and unlawfully frozen his token holdings.
The complaint accused the company of preventing him from transferring tokens and exercising governance rights, while threatening to permanently destroy his holdings through a token-burning mechanism.
World Liberty rejected the allegations, with CEO Zach Witkoff disputing Sun’s account of the restrictions.
The relationship had already deteriorated after Sun accused the project of including undisclosed blacklist controls in its smart contracts that could prevent investors from accessing their tokens.
Tensions intensified over a proposed governance change that would extend restrictions on early investors’ holdings.
World Liberty subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against Sun in Florida in May, accusing him of organizing a campaign to damage the project’s reputation and token price.
Sun rejected those accusations and maintained that his complaints about the company’s treatment of investors were legitimate.
In his latest statement, Sun cited World Liberty’s own published materials, which describe the company as American and committed to building decentralized financial services in the United States.
He argued that the company’s subsequent reliance on UAE citizenship contradicted how it had presented itself to prospective investors.
Sun said the sanctions motion was intended to make World Liberty and its lawyers bear the costs associated with what he considers misleading disclosures to the court.
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