Interpol has issued a “red notice” for Do Kwon, the founder of the failed cryptocurrency Terra.
The red notice means Interpol has asked law enforcement agencies around the world to find and arrest Kwon, who is accused of fraud after his company’s $40 billion collapse.
Kwon claims he is not running from authorities, and as recently as September 17 tweeted “I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar.” And this week he returned to Twitter to say he was “making zero effort to hide.” But he has not been easy to find. Earlier in the month South Korea issued a warrant for his arrest, along with five other individuals.
Prosecutors believe all of the accused were in Singapore at least until September 14. The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office said Kwon was “obviously on the run and has no intention to appear before us for questioning,” the Financial Times reported.
Each of the six people wanted by South Korean authorities have links to the stablecoin Terra and its sister token Luna. Stablecoins are supposed to have a relatively fixed price and are usually pegged to a more conventional commodity or currency, but Terra’s value plummeted during the cryptocurrency crash earlier this year.
The token was initially called the TerraUSD (UST) and was pegged to the US dollar, but when it was depegged in May, the crash occurred. The price of both of the tokens dropped to nearly zero. In April, Terra coin reached a high of $116 but now stands at less than $0.0002. Investors in the two coins are said to have lost around $42 billion.