The Montenegro authorities have arrested the founder of the cryptocurrency company Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, who was in search and capture accused of having defrauded 40,000 million dollars.
As confirmed by the Minister of the Interior of the Balkan country Filip Adzic, Kwon has been arrested for trying to enter the country with false documentation.
“Police in Montenegro have arrested the person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs,” the minister explained on his Twitter account.
Minister Adzic has referred to the detainee as the former “king of cryptocurrencies” and has assured that “he is behind the loss of more than 40,000 million dollars”.
Kwon was in search and capture after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused him last February of orchestrating a multi-million dollar fraud that crystallized in the sudden fall of his cryptocurrencies ‘TerraUSD’ and ‘Luna’ in May of 2022.
The founder of Terraform Labs was the creator of the algorithmic cryptocurrency ‘TerraUSD’, which subsequently lost its value parity with the US dollar, causing its twin coin ‘Luna’ to also lose much of its capitalization and crash. This caused large losses of money to his investors.
A few months ago, South Korea also launched an international search through Interpol for various crimes, including the creation of a pyramid scheme to launder money and tax evasion.
Kwon’s whereabouts were unknown after he moved from Singapore to evade South Korean justice. A court in the Asian country issued an arrest warrant against the computer scientist for violating the regulation of its markets.
The intelligence agencies of South Korea and the United States have been working together to investigate these alleged crimes of money laundering and fraud, with cryptocurrencies as the epicenter.
