Key takeaways:
- According to Filip Adzic, the interior minister of Montenegro, Do Kwon, the creator of Terraform Labs, has been taken into custody.
- Interpol issued a warrant for the former blockchain executive because of his involvement in the $40 billion failure of the Terra Luna ecosystem in May 2022.
It has been reported that Terra’s founder, Do Kwon, has been detained in Montenegro. In particular, Filip Adzic, the interior minister of Montenegro, reported Kwon’s detention by Montenegrin officials on Twitter after they arrested him.
Do Kwon, one of the two co-founders of Terra Luna, was detained on the soil of Montenegro on March 23, according to a tweet by Filip Adzic, the interior minister of the country.
Vijesti, a regional news source, has verified that the South Korean national who was detained is the one who is responsible for making the Tweet, which was posted from the Montenegro interior minister’s Twitter account, which was made in response to the statement made by the government. Adzic tweeted:
“Montenegrin police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs.”
In the opinion of Adzic, a person with “falsified documents” has been detained at the Podgorica airport, who is the founder and former CEO of Terra’s parent company. As far as its geography is concerned, Serbia lies south of Montenegrin, with which it shares a border as well.
Additionally, he mentions in his statement that the Montenegro police have detained an individual believed to be the South Korean fugitive whose location is unknown.
The South Korean authorities claim that Kwon has been hiding in Serbia since December 2022, which is due to the absence of an extradition treaty between Serbia and South Korea.
Adzic added that “40 billion dollars” in losses to users were caused by Terra‘s founder and previous CEO. On the other hand, he has claimed that officials are still awaiting an identity confirmation. Several nations, including the US and Singapore, were looking into the creator of Terra.
The official Twitter account of the Government of Montenegro follows the unverified handle of Adzic and has previously utilized it in public tweets.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit in February 2023 against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon, the firm behind the defunct TerraUST stablecoin. According to the SEC, Terraform and its creator Kwon sold securities backed by cryptocurrency to investors hoping to make a profit by promising that the tokens’ value would rise.
