Do Kwon, one of the world’s most wanted fugitives has reportedly been arrested in the South Eastern Europe state of Montenegro.
According to a March 23 tweet by Filip Adzic, the Minister of Interior of Montenegro noted that the Terraform founder had been arrested in Podgorica, the capital city of Montenegro while attempting to leave the country using forged documents.
“Montenegrin police have detained an individual suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, a South Korean citizen named Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs based in Singapore,” wrote Adzic.
“Former “king of cryptocurrencies”, responsible for losses exceeding 40 billion dollars, has been detained at the Podgorica airport with falsified documents, and is being sought by South Korea, the United States, and Singapore,” Mr Adzic added.
However, at the time of tweeting, the suspect’s identity was yet to be officially confirmed, according to the minister.
Kwon had been on the run since Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for him at the request of prosecutors in South Korea last September, CoinJot reported. He was later rumored to be hiding in Dubai before he allegedly escaped to Serbia, which does not have an extradition agreement with South Korea.
Kwon’s departure from the limelight came after the sudden collapse of the TerraUSD(USDT) algorithmic stablecoin and Terra’s native token LUNA mid-last year which caused billions of dollars in losses for millions of users worldwide. Several high-ranking crypto investment firms, including Celsius Network and Three Arrows Capital, also folded following the collapse and have since been embroiled in bankruptcy lawsuits.
Terra’s failure also indirectly led to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange in November, as it expropriated its customers’ deposits to cover up losses made on Terra’s collapse earlier in the year by its affiliated hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Last month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon with orchestrating a multi-billion-dollar crypto asset securities fraud involving UST and Luna. In the charge, the regulators alleged that Terraform and Kwon raised billions of dollars from investors “by offering and selling an inter-connected suite of crypto asset securities, many in unregistered transactions.”
The SEC further charged Kwon with violating the registration and anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, charges that could see the crypto mogul put away in jail for decades if extradited to the US.