Terraform Labs CEO Do-hyung Kwon, a key figure in the “Tera-Luna crash,” was arrested in Montenegro and is believed to have siphoned off large sums of money.
Dan Sung-dan, head of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office’s Joint Financial and Securities Crimes Investigation Unit, who is leading the investigation, told Bloomberg on Aug. 8 that they have identified and are tracking Kwon’s withdrawal of $29 million (about 37.83 billion won) from a virtual asset wallet owned by Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) since his arrest in March.
“We believe that Kwon Do-hyung or someone under his direction took it out and sent it somewhere other than the Sygnum bank to cash it out,” Dan said of the missing cryptocurrency, “and we are tracking where the funds went.”
Separately, in February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission메이저놀이터 (SEC) filed fraud charges against Kwon, alleging that he stole 10,000 bitcoins, cashed them out, and deposited them in a Swiss bank, which happened to be Sygnum Bank.
More than $100 million of Kwon’s funds in that bank were withdrawn between June of last year and February of this year, when he was on the run, and much of the money was reportedly sent to law firm accounts or used to pay Terraform Labs wages and bills, Bloomberg explained.
The roughly $13 million (about 16.9 billion won) that remains at Signum Bank is also believed to have been moved from LFG’s wallet, Dan said, adding that the company is seeking to freeze those funds.
Meanwhile, regarding Kwon’s recruitment battle in South Korea and the U.S., Dan said, “He could serve his sentence in South Korea and then serve time in the U.S.”
“In South Korea, financial fraud is punishable by more than 40 years in prison,” he said, suggesting that Kwon could face the longest sentence in South Korean financial crime history.
“The scenario is that Kwon will spend most of his life in prison, first in his native South Korea and then in the United States,” Bloomberg added.