Interpol say they have successfully arrested fugitive cryptocurrency kingpin Do Kwon (also known as Kwon Do-hyeong) in Montenegro. He’s wanted in both South Korea and the United States on charges of fraud, among others.
“Montenegrin police arrested an individual who is believed to be one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon,” Interior Minister Filip Adzic said on Twitter. South Korea’s Justice Ministry on Friday confirmed the arrest of Kwon and another unidentified individual linked to the cryptocurrency crash and said it will proceed with steps to extradite them to South Korea. Both South Korea and Montenegro are signatories to the European Convention on Extradition.
A South Korean national, Kwon founded the blockchain platform behind the TerraUSD stablecoin and its sister coin Luna. May 2022 saw both lose their value exponentially in just a few days. $40 billion was wiped from the crypto market. Earlier this year, US regulators accused him and his company Terraform Labs of “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving an algorithmic stablecoin and other crypto asset securities.” Kwon has also been charged with fraud and breaches of South Korea’s capital markets law.
The collapse of TerraUSD set off a massive investor panic around the world in sectors beyond crypto, but its most notable casualty was the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s platform, FTX. Since late last year, there have been federal investigations into whether Bankman-Fried engaged in illicit trading activity to drive down the prices of TerraUSD and Luna, the New York Times reported in December.
According to Bloomberg, federal prosecutors signaled they will extradite Kwon to face charges.
