Originally published by The Block on November 4, 2026, at 00:07:12 UTC+8 (November 3 UTC).
Tron founder Justin Sun said Tuesday that he had filed a motion seeking sanctions against World Liberty Financial, alleging the Trump-linked crypto venture failed to disclose its United Arab Emirates citizenship until months into their legal dispute.
The motion concerns court disclosures and jurisdiction—not government sanctions. Sun said he planned to refile his lawsuit in California state court after the sanctions motion was resolved.
Why the ownership disclosures matter
Sun, who says he invested $45 million in WLFI tokens, sued World Liberty in April, alleging fraud and an unlawful freeze of his tokens.
According to Sun, World Liberty initially listed only one entity in its ownership chain and identified Florida as its sole citizenship. In a later filing, it identified 22 members in that chain and claimed citizenship in Florida, Delaware, Puerto Rico and the UAE.
Sun alleges the delayed disclosure was an attempt to challenge the federal court’s jurisdiction and move the dispute 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.” Those are Sun’s allegations, not findings reported in the source.
Under the federal diversity-jurisdiction rules Sun cited, the 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 those purposes, the UAE ties could undermine the court’s jurisdiction.
A dispute with competing allegations
World Liberty countersued Sun in May, accusing him of running a “meritless PR stunt” against the Trump-family-backed project after his tokens were frozen. The supplied report does not describe a ruling on Sun’s sanctions motion or establish his allegations as proven.
World Liberty debuted in October 2024 and attracted significant scrutiny because of its association with President Donald Trump and his family. That connection, together with Sun’s stated investment and the token-freeze dispute, frames the attention around the case; it does not resolve the competing legal claims.
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 from the report, not live market prices.