Terra (LUNA) founder caught in Montenegro

25/03/2023
News, Altcoin

Terra (LUNA) co-founder Do Kwon has now been caught in Montenegro after a long flight. The allegations weigh heavily: Allegedly, Kwon enriched himself at the expense of investors. But now the judiciary has caught him – and he has to answer for himself.

Table of Contents

Terra (LUNA): Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro

Do Kwon, the South Korean entrepreneur and co-founder of Terra (LUNA), was reportedly arrested in Montenegro. Kwon, who had been on the run since May 2022, was apprehended by local police at Podgorica Airport. According to the Interior Minister of Montenegro, Filip Adzic , Kwon was caught with forged documents and is now being held on suspicion of his identity.

Nekadašnji “kralj kriptovaluta”, koji stoji iza gubitaka većih od 40 milijardi dolara, lišen je slobode na podgoričkom aerodromu sa falsifikovanim dokumentima, a istog potražuju Južna Koreja, SAD i Singapur.

Čekamo zvaničnu potvrdu identiteta.
2/2
— Filip Adzic (@filip_adzic) March 23, 2023

Do Kwon denies any wrongdoing and claims that capital markets law does not apply to crypto assets. However, he is wanted in his native South Korea on charges of manipulating the capital markets. Kwon left the country in May last year and fled abroad. Law enforcement and Interpol pursued Kwon in several countries and initially suspected that he was in Serbia . There were later reports that he flew to Dubai after leaving Singapore where his crypto projects were based.

Crash shook trust in other stablecoins

Kwon’s arrest comes amid a scramble for stablecoins, which have recently suffered from multiple bank failures. In fact, Terraform Labs had created its own algorithmic stablecoin. It reached a market capitalization of 18 billion US dollars. Authorities and financial regulators were already on the lookout for Kwon for his alleged involvement in the collapse of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin and the Terra ecosystem that left $40 billion in damage in May 2022.

The incident not only almost completely wiped out Terra’s token within a few days, but also shook confidence in other stablecoins. LUNA, once one of the top ten most valuable cryptocurrencies, crashed to virtually zero in a matter of hours. Previously, the cryptocurrency’s market cap was nearly $30 billion. Sister stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) lost its US dollar peg as a result.

The arrest of Do Kwon will now help to clarify the case and bring light into the darkness. It remains to be seen what the consequences will be for Kwon and his crypto empire. However, investors in Terras Token and other cryptocurrencies will surely be watching closely as events unfold.