Seoul/Atlanta
CNN
—
Interpol says a person arrested in Montenegro is Kwon Do-hyeong, also called Do Kwon, the disgraced founding father of a collapsed crypto firm who is needed in South Korea and the US on fraud and different expenses.
Kwon, a South Korean nationwide, based the blockchain platform behind the TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister coin Luna. Each cash misplaced their worth in a matter of days in Could 2022, wiping about $40 billion from the crypto market and setting off panic throughout the speculative sector.
Kwon’s id was confirmed by way of a fingerprint match, Interpol’s nationwide central bureau in Seoul instructed CNN on Friday.
A day earlier, Montenegrin Inside Affairs Minister Filip Adžić wrote on social media {that a} man believed to be Kwon was arrested within the capital Podgorica.
“He was arrested on the airport with counterfeit documentation and is needed by a number of international locations, together with the USA, South Korea, and Singapore,” Adžić mentioned in a Fb publish.
Kwon was primarily based in Singapore whereas operating the blockchain platform Terraform Labs. Seoul prosecutors instructed CNN in December that the crypto entrepreneur was believed to be in Serbia, the place he was in hiding after leaving Singapore through Dubai.
In September, a South Korean courtroom issued an arrest warrant for Kwon, after he was accused of fraud by traders within the nation within the wake of the collapse of his firm.
Kwon has been charged with fraud and breaches of South Korea’s capital markets legislation. He mentioned in October that he didn’t consider the fees had been professional, and claimed they had been “politically motivated.”
The crypto developer has repeatedly claimed on Twitter that he was not “on the run,” however refused to reveal his whereabouts attributable to worries about his private safety.
Terraform Labs was behind TerraUSD, a stablecoin which in idea was meant to retain a $1 worth level.
The collapse of TerraUSD and Luna, two linked cash, kick began the so-called “crypto winter,” from which the business was struggling to get well even because it skilled one other large blow from the autumn of crypto trade FTX in November.
– CNN’s Jake Kwon contributed reporting
