Do Kwon: Fugitive ‘cryptocrash’ boss arrested in Montenegro
- By Annabelle Liang, Guy Delauney and Nadeem Shad
- in Singapore, Belgrade and London
Police in South Korea say Do Kwon, the fugitive cryptocurrency boss behind the $40bn (£32.5bn) collapse of the terraUSD and Luna tokens, has been arrested in Montenegro.
He has since been charged with fraud by the United States Attorney’s Office.
Earlier this year, US regulators accused Mr Kwon and his company Terraform Labs of “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto-asset securities fraud”.
The firm did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment.
They had believed he was in Serbia, and even sent officials to Belgrade to negotiate, as the two nations do not have an extradition treaty.
Mr Kwon has previously denied he was in hiding, but never revealed his whereabouts.
News of his arrest was first shared by Montenegro’s Interior Minister Filip Adzic, who said on Twitter that “one of the world’s most wanted fugitives” had been arrested at Podgorica’s airport.
Adzic added that the suspect was allegedly traveling under a false name with false documents. Authorities were awaiting official confirmation of the man’s identity, he said.
On Friday, police in South Korea confirmed that the suspect in Montenegro was Mr Kwon, after his fingerprints matched official records.
Officials are reportedly working to repatriate Kwon to South Korea.
Mr. Kwon is separately charged with fraud by US prosecutors.
He faces charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, commodity fraud and conspiracy, according to an indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Thursday. Lawyers for Mr Kwon did not immediately respond to BBC requests for comment.
In February, US financial regulators claimed that Mr Kwon and Singapore-based Terraform Labs “failed to provide the public with full, fair and truthful disclosure required for a number of crypto-asset securities, particularly for Luna and TerraUSD.”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission said it had repeatedly claimed the tokens would increase in value, misleading investors about the stability of TerraUSD.
However, the value of the token and its associated Luna cryptocurrency plunged to near zero last May.
It triggered a selloff in major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether. As a result, the term cryptocrash trended online.
Globally, investors in TerraUSD and Luna lost an estimated $42 billion, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
