The South Korean Prosecutor's Office has requested this Monday the collaboration of Interpol to catch Do Kwon, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency empire Luna and TerraUSD, whose bubble burst this spring and collapsed like a house of cards leaving a hole of about 40,000 millions of euros.
The request comes after a South Korean court last Thursday issued an arrest warrant against him and five other people linked to digital currencies for a possible violation of that country's capital regulations.
Kwon, of South Korean origin, assured this weekend through social networks that he is not "on the run", but willing to collaborate with "any government agency", and added that he is in the process of articulating a defense " in multiple jurisdictions.
"We have held an extremely high bar for integrity and look forward to clarifying the truth in the coming months," he wrote.
The South Korean Prosecutor's Office, according to the
Financial Times,
assures, on the other hand, that this 31-year-old computer engineer trained in Stanford (California), dismantled the unit of Terraform Labs (the parent company of cryptocurrencies) based in South Korea and He went to Singapore at the end of April, coinciding with the moment in which the financial disaster was taking off.
The City-State Police, however, assured last Saturday that Kwon was not in this territory either, as reported by the Hong Kong newspaper
South China Morning Post
.
In his Twitter messages, the co-founder has not revealed his whereabouts.
On the contrary, he has addressed the cryptocurrency investor community with the following message: “I will tell you what I am doing and where I am if: 1) we are friends 2) we have plans to meet 3) we are involved in a web3 game based on GPS.
Otherwise, you don't have to know my GPS coordinates."
Dear CT - I will tell you what i am doing and where i am if:
1) we are friends
2) we have plans to meet
3) we are involved in a gps based web3 game
Otherwise you have no business knowing my gps coordinates
— Do Kwon 🌕 (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022
The crash of Luna, which was one of the main digital currencies, and of the
TerraUSD
stablecoin, the stable digital currency to which it is linked, last spring evaporated the savings of thousands of investors and has become one of those stories with moral of the global effervescence for cryptocurrencies: after reaching a price of almost 100 dollars, the techno-capitalist pyre turned 99% of Luna's value into smoke in 72 hours of panic.
Some analysts have come to compare the magnitude of this earthquake in the
crypto
universe with what the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 meant for the global financial system.
The contagion effect spread throughout the sector after it peaked at the end of 2021 and has provoked an urgent response from the States, which are trying to put an end to the jungle of the digital and ungraspable kingdom of cryptocurrencies.
The European Union agreed in June on a regulatory framework to limit anonymous transfers and try to establish global standards for the supervision of these currencies.
The move by South Korean judicial authorities marks a formal request to Interpol to put Kwon on the red notice list, technically "a request to law enforcement agencies around the world to locate and provisionally detain a person on hold." of extradition, delivery or similar legal action”, according to the website of the police agency.
The measure consists of a "notice" about wanted persons on an international scale, "but it is not an arrest warrant."
The South Korean Prosecutor's Office has also demanded that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of this country cancel Kwon's passport with the intention of limiting his movements.
The judicial fence surrounding the Luna fiasco began in South Korea at the end of May, shortly after its collapse, with an investigation by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor's Office related to two collective complaints filed by dozens of investors, who accuse to the founders of Terraform Labs for misleading them "with their flawed algorithmic coins."
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