Interpol issues red notice for Luna, TerraUSD co-founder Do Kwon
By Bryan Ke
A red notice has been issued for Do Kwon, the South Korean co-founder of the defunct cryptocurrencies Luna and TerraUSD (UST), effectively making him a wanted man among the 195 member countries of Interpol.
Prosecutors in Seoul told Bloomberg on Monday that the international police organization has issued a red notice for Kwon, who faces charges for the $60 billion meltdown of Terraform Labs’ Luna and TerraUSD cryptocurrencies.
South Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant for Kwon, born Kwon Do-hyung, and five other individuals linked to the Terraform Labs cryptocurrencies on Sept. 14 for violating South Korea’s Capital Markets Act. The warrant came around four months after the collapse of Terraform Labs’ cryptocurrencies.
Last week, South Korean prosecutors reportedly requested that Interpol issue a red notice for Kwon. The 31-year-old Stanford University graduate was reportedly living in Singapore when UST and Luna imploded in May, losing $40 billion in value.
The Singapore Police Force (SPF) confirmed in a statement on Sept. 17 that Kwon was no longer in the city-state at the time of the request.
“SPF will assist the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) within the ambit of our domestic legislation and international obligations. Do Kwon is currently not in Singapore,” the SPF said.
Luna, the sister token of UST, fell from a $116 high to less than $0.0002 in April. Global investors reportedly lost an estimated $42 billion from the crash in May, prompting South Korean authorities to open a case against the incident.
South Korean prosecutors also asked the country’s foreign ministry to revoke Kwon’s passport, believing that the cryptocurrency founder is “on the run,” an assumption that Kwon denied in a tweet.
“I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide,” Kwon wrote in a series of tweets on Sept. 17.
“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,” Kwon wrote.
Featured Image via Coinage
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