South Korea: Interpol Issued Red Notice Against Do Kwon Founder of Terraform Labs

• Do Kwon, founder of Terraform Labs, on the target of Interpol. 
• Kwon shifted from South Korea to Singapore starting September 2022. 

South Korea highlighted that Interpol urged law enforcement globally to trace and arrest Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform labs, who is facing charges related to the laundering of $60billion of the cryptocurrency he created. 

According to reports from Bloomberg, a Prosecuting attorney in Seoul wrote in a text message that the International Police organization had issued a red notice to Kwon, the latest outrageous chapter in the $2 trillion plunge in digital assets exposed extremely risky behaviour. Neither Interpol nor Kwon instantly replied to an email seeking comment.      

The officials of South Korea have charged Kwon and five others with crimes, including violations of Capital markets laws. At the start of 2022, Kwon relocated to Singapore from South Korea, where his firm Terraform was headquartered, but from  September 17, his location could not be traced, and it is believed that he is no longer in the city or state. Prosecutors later intensified their efforts to find him.   

 Terraform Labs was the creator of TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin and Luna token. Both these coins exploded in May and caused huge losses in the crypto market, which was already battling tight monetary policy.    

The digital assets are yet to recover, and regulators globally are scrambling to see how to avoid recurrence. A growing disdain grabs South Korea’s earlier hankering for crypto.

The collapse of Terra and the broader market trajectory exposed Three Arrows Capital, a leading crypto hedge fund. The contagion also affected lenders and brokers like Voyager Digital Ltd and Celsius Network Ltd.    

TerraUSD is also popular with the name of UST, which was intended to have a constant value of $1 in a complex system involving Luna. However, the system relied upon the ecosystem developed by Kwon 31, who completed his computer science degree at Stanford. The system collapsed as soon as the trust disappeared.    

The prosecutors of South Korea mentioned that they had issued an arrest warrant against Kwon because of “circumstantial evidence of escape.” He also made an issue of his claims that he was cooperating.   

Earlier in a Twitter post, Do Kwon noted, “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.”   

Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.

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