Interpol announced this evening the arrest of Kwon Do-hyeong, also recognised as Do Kwon, a disgraced crypto fugitive.
Crypto fugitive Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro, says inside minister https://t.co/pl9PshdPNb
— Financial Moments (@FT) March 23, 2023
Do Kwon is the founder of TerraUSD stablecoin and Luna, two digital currencies that dropped an approximated $40 billion past year.
Interpol apprehended Kwon, 31, and a further human being of curiosity at an airport in Montenegro. According to the Interior Ministry there, the two had been working with forged documents to vacation to Dubai.
As the Minister of Inside @filip_adzic, declared before currently, two citizens, Kwon Do Hyeong and Hon Chang Joon, have been apprehended and brought to the Simple Point out Prosecutor’s Office environment in Podgorica, on legal charges for the felony offense of doc forgery below (1/3) pic.twitter.com/iS0rRs2Fwv
— mupCG (@MupCg) March 23, 2023
“He was arrested at the airport with counterfeit documentation and is desired by a number of nations, like the Usa, South Korea, and Singapore,” Montenegrin Inside Affairs Minister Filip Adžić wrote in a Facebook post.
The arrest is the end result of an international months-lengthy search for Do Kwon. South Korea had requested Interpol to situation a “pink detect,” which will allow other nations to arrest Kwon.
According to the New York Times, U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of New York filed criminal costs against Mr. Kwon a couple several hours just after his arrest. The expenses include wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and have interaction in industry manipulation.
Who is Do Kwon?
Kwon graduated from Stanford and briefly labored at Apple right before creating his two cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD was a “stablecoin,” meant to retain a constant rate of $1, when Luna’s value fluctuated.
Between 2021 and early 2022, Luna was valued at $40 billion. Kwon turned broadly well known. His lovers referred to as on their own “Lunatics.”
But Luna in the long run crashed—its value wiped clear right away. The crash brought about a domino result on other popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Before long immediately after, Kwon went into hiding.
Kwon claimed on Twitter that he was “not on the run.”
I am not “on the operate” or everything equivalent – for any government company that has proven interest to connect, we are in comprehensive cooperation and we don’t have anything to cover
— Do Kwon ? (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022
But in accordance to CNN, a South Korean courtroom issued an arrest warrant for Kwon past September. He was believed to be in Serbia.
