South Korean Authorities Request Interpol Red Notice For Terra’s Do Kwon

South Korean prosecutors have requested that Interpol issue a red notice against Do Kwon, the co-founder of the collapsed Terra ecosystem.

According to a report in the Financial Times, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office has “begun the procedure to place [Kwon] on the Interpol red notice list and revoke his passport.” 

Interpol red notices are issued for fugitives wanted either for prosecution or to serve a sentence; Kwon has yet to appear on the Interpol red notice site. 

Terra Co-Founder Do Kwon: I Am Not 'On the Run'

Earlier this week, South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Do Kwon, the disgraced co-founder of the Terra ecosystem that crashed spectacularly in May; they also asked the finance ministry to void his passport. The authorities looking for Kwon believed he was in Singapore, but on Saturday, Singapore police said Kwon is not there. Now Do Kwon has chimed in on Twitter. On Saturday afternoon, Kwon tweeted, "I am not 'on the run' or anything similar - for any government agency that has...

Last week, South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant against Kwon, accusing him of violating capital market rules; they also asked the finance ministry to void his passport. At the time, Kwon was believed to be resident in Singapore; police in Singapore subsequently confirmed that the Terra co-founder is no longer in the country.

On Saturday, Do Kwon himself tweeted that, “I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar,” adding that, “for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide.”

The collapse of Terra

Launched in 2020, the Terra blockchain ecosystem was built around the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and its sister coin, LUNA.

In May 2022, the UST stablecoin lost its dollar peg and never recovered, causing both LUNA and Terra to enter a death spiral that wiped out billions of dollars in value in less than a week.

Following Terra’s collapse, law enforcement agencies and regulators began investigations into Terraform Labs, the company behind all things Terra, and its co-founder, Do Kwon.

In June, a class action lawsuit was brought against Do Kwon and Terraform Labs in the U.S District Court of North California, while the SEC revealed that it was investigating the collapse of UST.

South Korean Authorities Widen Terra Probe as Co-Founder Daniel Shin's Home Raided

A probe into possible illegal activity behind the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and the affiliated LUNA token has deepened with a raid on the Seoul home of the firm’s co-founder Daniel Shin, according to a Bloomberg report citing local media. Investigators also reportedly visited the office of the mobile payment app Chai, which was founded by Shin in 2019. Chai has been marketed as the first mobile payments app to utilize the Terra blockchain to enable anyone with a bank account to make...

A month later, South Korean prosecutors raided the house of Daniel Shin, another co-founder of Terraform Labs, as a part of the probe.

South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol has relaunched a financial crimes unit to investigate the collapse of the Terra ecosystem further.

Do Kwon has denied allegations that Terra was a “fraud,” and has claimed that he lost almost his entire net worth in the crash.