Do Kwon, co-founder of the failed businesses TerraUSD and Luna, is accused of defrauding investors out of $40 billion.
Wanted According to a representative of the Montenegrin government, the South Korean developer of cryptocurrency Do Kwon has been detained there. Kwon is accused of deceiving investors in the US and is being prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
In a tweet sent on Thursday, the interior minister of Montenegro, Filip Adzic, stated that “Montenegrin police have captured a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Laboratories.”
In a later tweet, Adzic stated that the person who was thought to be Kwon had been caught at the airport in Podgorica and that he had been attempting to fly with false documents.
The SEC filed a civil fraud complaint against Kwon and Terraform Laboratories PTE Ltd in a federal court in Manhattan last month, alleging that he concealed risks associated with the TerraUSD cryptocurrency.Kwon was also accused of deceiving investors about how Luna, another cryptocurrency, was used in South Korea.
Kwon was charged with “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities scam,” according to the lawsuit.
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Last year, both currencies lost all of their value in a matter of days, wiping away the investments of thousands of investors and losing almost $40 billion in all.
In September 2022, South Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant for Kwon. They also received a so-called “red alert” from international law enforcement organisation Interpol, which widened the hunt for him.
Although Kwon has previously refuted accusations that he was “on the run or something like,” the Yonhap news agency claimed in December that he was hiding in Serbia. Kwon said on Twitter in September, without elaborating, “For any government agency that has shown an interest in communicating, we are in full cooperation and we have nothing to hide.”
Kwon refuted all accusations of misconduct in a Wall Street Journal interview from last June, saying: “There is a difference between failing and operating a scam.”
