Hong Kong
CNN
—
Do Kwon, a disgraced tycoon behind the collapse of the TerraUSD and Luna coins rocking cryptocurrencies property market in May, is hiding in Serbia, according to South Korean prosecutors, who are seeking to arrest him.
Kwon, a South Korean citizen, traveled from Singapore, where he lives while running blockchain platform Terraform Labs, to Dubai and eventually Serbia, a spokesman for the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office told CNN today. Tuesday.
According to the spokesman, the office was aware that Kwon was in Serbia in November and was monitoring him, adding that it was seeking assistance from the Serbian government to arrest and extradite him.
In September, a Korean court issued a ruling arrest warrant for him, after he was accused of fraud by investors following the collapse of his company.
Kwon has been charged with fraud and violating South Korea’s capital markets laws. He said in October that he doesn’t believe the charges are legitimate, adding that they are “politically motivated.”
Cryptocurrency developer has many times statement on Twitter that he was not “on the run”, but refused to disclose his whereabouts due to concerns about his personal security.
Terraform Labs is behind the “stablecoin” TerraUSD, which in theory is meant to retain the $1 price point and its sister coin Luna. Both of these coins lost most of their value in just a few days in May, wiping tens of billions of dollars in value from the crypto market. panic throughout the speculative sector.
The collapse of the two linked coins began the so-called “crypto winter,” from which the industry is struggling to recover even as it suffers another blow from the crash. financial crisis. The collapse of the crypto exchange FTX in November. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after US prosecutors filed criminal charges against him.
— Jon Sarlin contributed to this report.
