Interpol tonight introduced the arrest of Kwon Do-hyeong, also referred to as Do Kwon, a disgraced crypto fugitive.
Crypto fugitive Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro, inside minister says https://t.co/pl9PshdPNb
—Monetary Occasions (@FT) March 23, 2023
Do Kwon is the founding father of TerraUSD stablecoin and Luna, two digital currencies that misplaced round $40 billion final 12 months.
Interpol apprehended Kwon, 31, and one other individual of curiosity at an airport in Montenegro. Based on the Ministry of the Inside on the spot, the 2 males used false paperwork to go to Dubai.
As Minister of the Inside @filip_adzicintroduced earlier within the day, two residents, Kwon Do Hyeong and Hon Chang Joon, have been apprehended and brought to the Prosecutor Normal’s Workplace in Podgorica, charged with the legal offense of falsifying paperwork beneath (1 /3) pic.twitter.com/iS0rRs2Fwv
– mupCG (@MupCg) March 23, 2023
“He was arrested on the airport with cast paperwork and is needed by a number of international locations, together with the USA, South Korea and Singapore,” Montenegrin Minister of Inside Affairs Filip Adžić wrote in a message on Fb.
The arrest is the fruits of an extended worldwide seek for Do Kwon. South Korea had requested Interpol to concern a “pink discover”, which permits different international locations to arrest Kwon.
Based on the New York Occasions, US prosecutors within the Southern District of New York filed legal prices towards Mr. Kwon hours after his arrest. The costs embrace wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to defraud and have interaction in market manipulation.
Who’s Do Kwon?
Kwon graduated from Stanford and labored briefly at Apple earlier than designing his two cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD was a “stablecoin”, supposed to take care of a continuing worth of $1, whereas the worth of Luna fluctuated.
Between 2021 and early 2022, Luna was valued at $40 billion. Kwon has turn out to be highly regarded. His followers referred to as themselves “Lunatics”.
However Luna lastly crashed – her worth was erased in a single day. The crash brought about a domino impact on different widespread cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Quickly after, Kwon went into hiding.
Kwon claimed on Twitter that he was “not on the run”.
I am not “on the run” or something like that – to any authorities company that has expressed an curiosity in speaking, we’re in full cooperation and don’t have anything to cover
“Is Kwon?” (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022
However based on CNN, a South Korean courtroom issued an arrest warrant for Kwon final September. It was believed that he was in Serbia.
