Interpol Reportedly Issued “Red Notice” for Terra’s Do Kwon
- Bloomberg cited a text message from South Korean prosecutors, who claimed Interpol has requested law enforcement agencies worldwide “locate and provisionally arrest” Do Kwon.
- The co-founder of Terraform Labs had previously claimed he was not “on the run”, but his location remains unknown after authorities confirmed he was not in Singapore.
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Prosecutors in South Korea have claimed that Interpol has issued a worldwide “Red Notice” for the co-founder of now defunct stablecoin issuer Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, Bloombreg reported in 26 September.
According to the publication — which cited a text message from prosecutors in Seoul — the international police organization issued the notice in response to charges related to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem. Interpol’s website explains that a “Red Notice” is a request to law enforcement worldwide to “locate and provisionally arrest” an individual pending “extradition, surrender, or similar legal actions”.
The efforts to find Do Kwon started on 14 September, when a court in South Korea issued an arrest warrant for Kwon and five other individuals, alleging they had violated the country’s Capital Markets Act. At the time, South Korea’s prosecutor’s office claimed all six individuals were located in the port city of Singapore, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately taking measures to revoke Kwon’s passport.
Several days later, the Singapore Police Force confirmed that the wanted crypto developer was no longer located in the city-state, where Terraform Labs was based in. On 17 September — two days before South Korea requested the Red Notice from Interpol — Kwon took to Twitter to say he was not “on the run”, and that Crypto Twitter had “no business knowing my gps coordinates”. He tweeted:
The problems with the Terra ecosystem Kwon co-founded started on 9 May, when its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) — now rebranded to TerraUSD Classic (USTC) — lost its peg to the U.S. dollar, causing billions of bollards worth of liquidations across the entire crypto market.
- Blockchain network Terra said its website was compromised by hackers over the weekend, and warned users against ongoing phishing scams.
- The platform later froze its website to prevent the hackers from exploiting it, and reminded users to avoid websites with the terra.money domain for now.
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- Terraform Labs’ founder Do Kwon and CFO Han Chang-Joon were found guilty and sentenced to four months in prison for their use of forged Costa Rican passports.
- The Basic Court in the country’s capital Podgorica clarified that the time both individuals spent under detention in the country will also be taken into account.
- A district court in South Korea ruled that the token was not a security, noting that it was “difficult to see LUNA as financial investment product regulated by the Capital Markets Act”.
- Using this decision, the court dismissed the prosecution’s request to confiscate properties owned by Terraform Labs’ co-founder Hyun-seung Shin.