According to a report from CNBC, South Korean authorities apprehended Terra’s Head of General Affairs, Yu Mo, as part of their investigation against Do Kwon and the LUNA debacle. The suspect was captured without an arrest warrant to prevent him from fleeing the country.
Mo is one of the five individuals charged by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office of allegedly violating the country’s capital markets law by committing fraud. Along with Do Kwon, Mo was allegedly involved in the creation, promotion, and support of the failed Terra (LUNA/LUC) ecosystem.
At its peak, this project’s market cap stood at over $40 billion and upon its collapse, it destroyed the capital of several investors, and many major companies in the crypto industry, including hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) and crypto lender Celsius Network. The Terra incident has been devasting for many betting on its success.
This has attracted the attention of authorities in South Korea determined to bring Do Kwon and other key Terra members to justice. Kwon is the main suspect, he operates as CEO of the company behind LUNA, Terraform Labs.
However, the South Korean national has been able to evade authorities in the Asian country and abroad. As Bitcoinist reported, the law enforcement agencies behind the investigation against Do Kwon and Terra issued an arrest warrant against its founder.
The warrant was extended beyond South Korean borders with the cooperation of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). This agency issued a “Red Notice”, an arrest warrant enforceable by all of its members, against Kwon.
Terra Co-Founder Do Kwon: “I’m In My Living Room”
The CNBC report claims that South Korean authorities are in the process of disabling Kwon’s passport and freezing Bitcoin (BTC) funds worth millions of dollars in crypto exchanges KuCoin and OKX, in order to facilitate his apprehension. The suspect was allegedly located in Singapore until weeks ago when the first arrest warrant was issued.
Do Kwon has denied the allegations, the criminal investigation, and his connection to around $100 million in BTC confiscated on the crypto exchange platform. In addition, he claims that he is making no effort to hide from law enforcement agencies. Via his Twitter account he said:
I’m writing code in my living room (…). Yeah as I said I’m making zero effort to hide I go on walks and malls, no way none of CT (Crypto Twitter) hasn’t run into me the past couple weeks.
Just yesterday he acknowledged that Tweeting about the criminal investigation might be harmful if he must defend himself in court. Nevertheless, the Terra Co-Founder believes his personal security is irrelevant to defend the “truth” of the crypto movement, he wrote:
Would probably make it much worse, but as you can see, self-preservation is not the dominant motivating factor. The crypto movement wins in truth and loses in falsehood – however this plays out I want to make sure false narratives don’t hurt an important learning opportunity
Did Do Kwon Lied About Not Using KuCoin To Hold Bitcoin?
Speaking of the truth, on-chain investigator Ergo looked into the funds attributed to the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG). These funds were the ones frozen by South Korean authorities which is another which is allegedly not controlled by Do Kwon.
Ergo was able to connect the LFG wallet with transactions to KuCoin and OKX, the exchanges part of the investigation, and was able to determine that the funds are all tie to a single entity. Due to the amount of BTC seized, Ergo wonders why no one else has complained about their funds being confiscated on these platforms.
Shortly after initial withdrawal from Binance, a 665 BTC spend was made to Kucoin.
On May 16, the large withdrawal made the 313 BTC spend back to the new LFG address…
An obvious sign that these associated coins are associated with LFG. pic.twitter.com/vjaGhI9oFs
— 🏴∴Ergo∴🏴 (@ErgoBTC) October 5, 2022
Source: https://bitcoinist.com/south-korea-captures-key-terra-do-kwon-still-run/