South Korea aims to invalidate Terra founder Do Kwon’s passport: report

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After issuing an arrest warrant for Terra Founder Do Kwon, South Korean authorities seek to invalidate Do Kwon’s passport and force him back home. 

Kwon has been thought to reside in Singapore for months now, claiming to have moved to the city-state way before the ill-fated Terra project went up in flames. According to a report by a Korean newspaper, Korean authorities are now seeking to expedite his return back home by invalidating his passport.

CoinGeek reported that Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant against Kwon last week, seeking to apprehend him alongside five others he worked with at Terraform Labs, the company behind LUNA and UST digital currencies. 

The newspaper noted that invalidating a passport is a lengthy process that could take up to a month. In the meantime, the Korean authorities will be pressuring him to return to the country.

Terra’s ecosystem tokens, LUNA and UST stablecoin, crashed in May, taking $60 billion worth of value with them. The crash had a butterfly effect on the industry, and since then, several notable companies, including Three Arrows Capital and Celsius Network, have all collapsed.

While creating an (un)stablecoin like UST isn’t a crime, Korean authorities are looking into allegations that Kwon cashed out over $2.7 billion in UST before the token depegged and eventually crashed to zero. He’s accused of having used a Terra-based DeFi borrowing protocol to cash out UST to USDC and USDT.

🧵 Some of you thought $80m per month was bad. That's nothing. Here's how Do Kwon cashed out $2.7 billion (33 x $80m!) over the span of mere months thanks to Degenbox: the perfect mechanism to drain liquidity out of the LUNA & UST system and into hard money like USDT. (1/13)

— FatMan (@FatManTerra) June 11, 2022

As Korean authorities seek to push Kwon to return home, a new question has cropped up—where is the Terra founder? While initially he was thought to reside in Singapore, local police in the city-state have disputed the claims.

In a brief statement, Singaporean police stated:

“Do Kwon is currently not in Singapore. SPF will assist the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) within the ambit of our domestic legislation and international obligations.”

Kwon’s work permit in Singapore is set to expire on December 7, and he’d have to renew it to continue residing in the country. With the investigation hanging over his head, this renewal might be much harder than it would have been a few weeks ago.

For those that want to know where he is, Kwon had one message over the weekend—his location is none of your business. 

Dear CT – I will tell you what i am doing and where i am if:

1) we are friends
2) we have plans to meet
3) we are involved in a gps based web3 game

Otherwise you have no business knowing my gps coordinates

— Do Kwon 🌕 (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022

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