Interpol has reportedly approved South Korean prosecutors’ request to issue a red notice against Do Kwon, the co-founder of the collapsed Terra ecosystem, according to Bloomberg.
Kwon has been charged with violating capital markets rules in South Korea and faces legal challenges in multiple jurisdictions.
According to South Korean prosecutors' text message, a red notice for the Terraform Labs co-founder has now been issued, meaning that law enforcement agencies worldwide will now co-operate to locate and arrest the crypto founder.
How Terra's UST and LUNA Imploded
Decrypting DeFi is Decrypt's DeFi email newsletter. Art: Grant Kempster Amid the craziest week in crypto ever, the collapse of Terra's UST stablecoin and governance token LUNA emerged as the biggest story. Amid the crash, LUNA, formerly a top 10 coin by market cap, fell 100% to fraction of a fraction of a cent, and UST, designed to stay pegged at $1, bottomed out at 13 cents. So what the hell happened? Grab your coffee, you're going to need it. There were several forces at work. The first is the...
Interpol red notices are issued for fugitives wanted either for prosecution or to serve a sentence, acting as a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.
At the time of writing, Kwon has yet to appear on Interpol’s red notice list, which features a total of 7, 512 names.
Interpol told Decrypt that it "does not comment on specific cases and individuals. Please note separately that the majority of Red Notices are not made public and are restricted to law enforcement use only."
Kwon has not immediately replied to Decrypt's request for comment.
Authorities on the hunt for Kwon
Kwon, along with another co-founder of Terraform Labs Daniel Shin, was the key person behind the TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin, once the industry’s ninth-largest asset by market capitalization, and its sister token LUNA.
The Terra ecosystem imploded in May this year, resulting in vast losses in crypto markets, with more than $40 billion of investors’ wealth wiped out in a matter of several weeks.
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...
South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant against Kwon on September 14. They also asked the finance ministry to void his passport. This was followed by a request for Interpol to issue a red notice against Do Kwon
According to South Korean prosecutors, Kwon left for Singapore at the end of April, but his whereabouts remain unclear. Singapore police said earlier this month that he was not in the city-state.
The last time Kwon appeared on social media was on September 17, when he took to Twitter to say that he was 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.”
