The Balkan country of Serbia has emerged as a possible location for Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon, who’s wanted by South Korean authorities on charges of violating the country’s capital markets act.
According to South Korean prosecutors, Kwon moved to Serbia last month via Dubai, local news agency Yonhap reported.
South Korea’s Ministry of Justice is also requesting investigative assistance from the Serbian government, per the report. There is a possibility that Kwon has already moved to a neighboring country as there is no official entry or exit record due to the invalidation of the 31-year-old entrepreneur’s passport.
South Korea and Serbia do not have an extradition treaty, but in the past, the two countries both have agreed to requests under the European Convention on Extradition.
Neither South Korean prosecutors nor Terraform Labs immediately responded to Decrypt’s request for comment.
Do Kwon’s whereabouts unknown
The Terra ecosystem, which comprised algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD UST and the governance token Lun, imploded in May this year, with more than $40 billion of investors’ wealth wiped out in a matter of weeks.
Terra’s collapse accompanied a massive crypto selloff, sending the prices of Bitcoin and other top cryptocurrencies tumbling. The crash is also believed to be partly to blame for the bankruptcies of high-profile crypto lenders Celsius and Voyager, as well as hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
It also prompted increased scrutiny of crypto investing and stablecoins from regulators across the world.
South Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant for Kwon on September 14, with Interpol slapping the Terra co-founder with a Red Notice later that month.
The Interpol notice is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.
The following month, South Korean prosecutors said Kwon had traveled via Dubai to an unknown country after leaving Singapore, where Terraform Labs is headquartered.
Kwon has previously denied he is in hiding, but his whereabouts remain unknown.
“I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation, and we don’t have anything to hide,” he tweeted in September.
Kwon has also denied any wrongdoing in regard to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem.
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Sourced from decrypt.co.
Written by Andrew Asmakov on 2022-12-12 10:22:12.
