The co-founder of Terraform Labs is accused of crimes related to the collapse of the cryptocurrencies used in the Terra ecosystems in South Korea.
Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terraform Labs who is accused of creating a $60 billion cryptocurrency wipeout, has been sought out by law enforcement agencies globally, according to South Korea.
A “Red Notice” for Kwon was apparently requested by South Korean prosecutors to be issued by Interpol on September 19 barely one week prior to the announcement. The move comes shortly after South Korean police filed an arrest order for Kwon and five additional collaborators for allegedly breaking the country’s capital markets regulations.
According to the Interpol website, a Red notice is a “request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.”
Kwon was previously thought to be a resident of Singapore, but local officials claimed on Sept. 17 that he wasn’t there. A few hours later, Kwon declared that he wasn’t “on the run,” though he didn’t specify where he was.
He also stated: “We are in the process of defending ourselves in multiple jurisdictions – we have held ourselves to an extremely high bar of integrity, and look forward to clarifying the truth over the next few months.”
The algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its sibling token LUNA were created by Terraform Labs. In May, both coins crashed, causing enormous losses in the cryptocurrency markets, which were already in trouble due to tightening monetary policies.
Regulators around the world are studying the devastation to figure out how to prevent a repeat as digital assets have not yet recovered.