The South Korean Prosecutor's Office said this Friday that it will seek the extradition of Do Kwon, founder of Terraform Labs who was arrested the day before in Montenegro after being searched and captured for allegedly defrauding 40,000 million dollars.
The Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office will begin the process to request that Kwon be transferred from Montenegro, according to the South Korean agency Yonhap, although it is still unknown if the businessman will be sent to South Korea, since he also faces charges in the United States. United States and Singapore.
The founder of Terraform Labs was detained at the airport in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, the country's Interior Minister Filip Adzic confirmed, saying he was arrested with false documents, and that they were waiting for his confirmation. identity.
"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 said, referring to the detainee as the former "king of cryptocurrencies".
Kwon, who had been on the run for several months and had last been seen in Serbia in December last year, was arrested along with one of his aides, surnamed Han, according to Yonhap.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Terraform Labs and its CEO, Kwon, last February of the sudden fall of their TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies in May 2022.
The SEC alleges that Singapore-based Terraform and Kwon orchestrated a multi-billion dollar fraud that partially took place in the US from 2018 to 2022, when TerraUSD collapsed.
TerraUSD was a 'stablecoin' (digital asset backed by a traditional currency) that maintained its parity with the dollar through a complex algorithm linked to Luna, an unbacked cryptocurrency.
In about five days, TerraUSD went from trading at parity with the dollar to losing practically all its value, causing losses that the indictment document estimates at about 40,000 million dollars and that even affected the price of the main cryptocurrency, bitcoin. .
The South Korean prosecutor's office, which accuses Kwon of implementing a Ponzi scheme (a type of pyramid scheme in which investors are paid alleged profits that are actually funds from subsequent investors), had already issued an arrest warrant for the businessman. , which is also claimed by the Singapore courts and which already had a red notice from Interpol .
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