Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon currently operates outside of Europe, according to the Korean indictment. Kwon’s passport has been revoked by the Seoul Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
South Korean publication KBS reports that Terra LUNA CEO Do Kwon is currently living in Europe, even though the South Korean Foreign Ministry invalidated his passport.
Kwon had reportedly fled to the unknown European location via Dubai before his passport was invalidated.
The revelation of Kwon’s purported whereabouts comes nearly a month after Seoul’s foreign ministry said Kwon had two weeks to return his passport.
If he did not comply, his passport would be revoked. Consequently, the move would have forced Kwon to return to South Korea and face capital markets law violation charges, along with several other Terraform Labs employees.
Earlier this year, South Korean prosecutors from the Southern District of Seoul launched a global search for Kwon after the $40 billion collapse of the stablecoin TerraUSD, and its sister token, LUNA, in May 2022.
At the request of South Korean officials, Interpol issued a Red Notice for Kwon, which is not an international arrest warrant. Rather, it allows law enforcement in one of Interpol’s 195 member countries to provisionally arrest a person for extradition, surrender, or other legal action.
Kwon Manipulated the Price of LUNA
According to KBS, South Korean prosecutors obtained evidence that Kwon manipulated LUNA’s price. They gained access to a conversation between Kwon and a former Terraform Labs employee. In the discussion, Kwon ordered the employee to participate in the manipulation.
“I can’t reveal the details, but it was a conversation history where CEO Kwon specifically ordered price gouging,” a South Korean prosecutor’s official said.
Previously, a representative for Kwon had denied these accusations.
Kwon Boasts About “Creative Period”
Still, Kwon seems relatively unfazed and has continued to write code for the Terra 2.0 Blockchain. After the collapse of the original ecosystem, he released Terra 2.0 as a hard fork of the original network. The new Blockchain has new LUNA and TerraUSD tokens, while the old chain tokens have been renamed LUNC and USTC.
On November 3, 2022, Kwon said that he had had an unprecedented opportunity for creative expression in recent weeks.
Later in October 2022, he claimed in an interview on the Unchained podcast that the charges against him had a political agenda and apologized to private investors in Terra.
Amid Do Kwon’s dodging, LUNC is currently trading at $0.00022148. It has not significantly recovered from the crash earlier this year. On the other hand, LUNA is trading at $2.40 and is down 87% from its all-time high.
By Audy Castaneda
