Samir KajosevicPodgoricaBIRNMarch 23, 202316:45The wanted South Korean founder of the failed cryptocurrency Terra, Do Kwon, was arrested on Thursday at Montenegro’s main airport with falsified identity documents, the country’s Interior Minister announced.
Montenegrin police officers in the capital Podgorica. Photo: BIRN/Samir Kajosevic
Montenegrin Interior Minister Filip Adzic on Thursday announced the arest of the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency Terra, Do Kwon, at the airport of the capital Podgorica. He was caught with falsified identity documents, and, according to Adzic, taken into custody.
“The Montenegrin police has apprehended an individual believed to be one of the most-wanted fugitives, the South Korean national Do Kwon, the co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs based in Singapore,” Adzic said on Twitter. “We are awaiting official confirmation of his identity,” he added.
Last September a South Korean court issued an arrest warrant for the founder of Terraform Lab company after he was accused of fraud by investors in the wake of the collapse of his company.
Kwon was charged with fraud and breaches of South Korea’s capital markets law, but Kwon claimed tthe charges were “politically motivated.”
On September 26, an Interpol red notice was issued for his arrest for his alleged role in the collapse of the $40 billion Terra Luna (LUNC) and Terra USD (USTC) ecosystem in May 2022. He is also wanted by regulatory authorities in South Korea, Singapore and the US.
Terraform Labs was behind the Terra USD “stablecoin”, which was designed to have a relatively fixed price and are usually pegged to a real-world commodity or currency. Terra’s value collapsed last May from $116 dollars to less than 0.0002 dollars.
Globally, investors in the two coins lost an estimated $42 billion dollars, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Some investors lost their entire life savings, and South Korean authorities have opened several criminal probes into the crash.
On February 16, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon with “orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving an algorithmic stablecoin and other crypto asset securities”.
The US Department of Justice has also been probing Kwon’s role in the collapse of the Terra Luna ecosystem, but no criminal charges have been filed against Kwon within the United States.
On February 23, media reported that South Korean and Serbian authorities tried to locate Kwon in Serbia, where he was reportedly hiding out since December 2022. The Serbian authorities did not address the allegations.
Source link: balkaninsight.com
