According to a report by CNBC, South Korean authorities arrested Earth’s Chief of General Affairs, Yu Mo, as part of their investigation into Do Kwon and the LUNA debacle. The suspect was captured without a warrant to prevent him from fleeing the country.
Mo is one of five people charged by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office for allegedly violating the country’s capital market law by committing fraud. Along with Do Kwon, Mo was allegedly involved in the creation, promotion and support of the failed Earth (LUNA/LUC) ecosystem.
At its peak, the market capitalization of this project was more than 40 billion dollars, and after its collapse, it destroyed the capital of several investors and many major companies in the crypto industry, such as hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) and crypto lender Celsius Network. The Terra incident has been devastating for many betting on its success.
This has drawn the attention of South Korean authorities determined to bring Do Kwon and other key members of Terra to justice. Kwon is the prime suspect, operating as CEO of the company behind LUNA, Terraform Labs.
However, the South Korean national has been able to evade authorities in the Asian country and abroad. As reported by Bitcoinist, the law enforcement agencies behind the investigation against Do Kwon and Terra issued an arrest warrant against its founder.
The order was extended beyond South Korea’s borders with the cooperation of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). That agency issued a “Red Notice,” an arrest warrant enforceable by all its members, against Kwon.
Terra co-founder Do Kwon: “I’m in my living room”
The CNBC report claims that South Korean authorities are in the process of deactivating Kwon’s passport and freezing millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin (BTC) funds in crypto exchanges KuCoin and OKX, in order to facilitate his apprehension The suspect was allegedly in Singapore until weeks ago when the first arrest warrant was issued.
Do Kwon has denied the allegations, the criminal investigation and his connection to about $100 million in BTC seized from the crypto exchange platform. He also claims that he is making no effort to hide from law enforcement. Through his Twitter account he said:
I’m writing code in my living room (…). Yeah, like I said, I’m making zero effort to hide, I go for walks and malls, no way no one on CT (Crypto Twitter) has come across me in the last two weeks.
Just yesterday he acknowledged that tweeting about the criminal investigation could be damaging if he has to defend himself in court. However, Terra’s co-founder believes his personal safety is irrelevant to defending the “truth” of the crypto movement, writing:
It would probably do a lot worse, but as you can see, self-preservation is not the dominant motivating factor. The crypto movement wins in truth and loses in falsehood; however this is played, I want to make sure false narratives don’t detract from an important learning opportunity.
Did Kwon lie about not using KuCoin to hold Bitcoin?
Speaking of truth, the Ergo chain investigator investigated the funds attributed to the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG). These funds were the ones frozen by the authorities in South Korea, which is another one that is allegedly not controlled by Do Kwon.
Ergo was able to connect the LFG wallet to transactions on KuCoin and OKX, the exchanges that are part of the investigation, and was able to determine that all funds are linked to a single entity. Due to the amount of BTC seized, Ergo wonders why no one else has complained about their funds being seized on these platforms.
Shortly after the initial withdrawal from Binance, an outlay of 665 BTC was made on Kucoin.
On May 16th, the big withdrawal resulted in the 313 BTC being spent to the new address of LFG…
A clear sign that these associated coins are associated with LFG. pic.twitter.com/vjaGhI9oFs
— 🏴∴Ergo∴🏴 (@ErgoBTC) October 5, 2022
