Interpol has now asked law enforcement agencies throughout the world to find and arrest Do Kwon, the founder of the failed crypto Terra. Korean press says a red notice has been issued for the 31-year-old, who is accused of fraud over the firm’s $40 billion collapse.
An arrest warrant was issued in his native South Korea earlier this month. Do Kwon flew to Singapore in May – before Terra crashed – but the authorities say that he is no longer there.
South Korean prosecutors had asked Interpol to place him on the red notice list – a request it has now complied with – and it asked the foreign ministry in Seoul to revoke his passport, stating that Do Kwon was ‘on the run’.
He has denied that he is in hiding, but has not revealed his whereabouts. The prosecutors have also issued several arrest warrants for five other people – who are yet to be named – linked to the so-called stablecoin Terra and its sister token Luna.
Buy Crypto NowStablecoins are well-designed to have a relatively static price and are normally pegged to a real-world commodity or currency – but Terra’s value collapsed during 2022’s wider crypto crash. The Terra Luna network collapsed in May, with the price of both tokens dropping to near zero, and the fallout hitting the wider crypto-market.
From a high of $116 in April, a Terra coin is now worth less than $0.0002. Throughout the world, investors in the two coins lost around $42 billion, based on blockchain analytics company Elliptic. Some of the investors lost their life savings, and South Korean authorities have opened many criminal probes into the crash.
