Interpol Has Issued a Red Notice for Do Kwon, Say South Korean Prosecutors

The International Criminal Police Organization, known widely as Interpol, has issued a Red Notice on Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform Labs and the Terra ecosystem – as the manhunt for the elusive crypto chief continues.

South Korean prosecutors confirmed the Red Notice on September 26, per a number of South Korean media outlets including SBS. The prosecution declined to make any further comment on the matter, however.

An Interpol Red Notice is the highest level request that Interpol is capable of issuing – and effectively asks police officers in almost every nation in the world to “locate and provisionally arrest” the individual in question “pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.”

Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office’s Financial and Securities Crime Unit first approached Interpol for assistance last week after issuing an arrest warrant earlier in the month.

The nation’s foreign ministry has also stepped in, and hopes to cancel Kwon’s passport – in a bid to force Kwon’s deportation.

Where Is Do Kwon?

South Korean authorities claim that Kwon is now a “fugitive” and stated that it was “evident” that Kwon was now “on the run.”

Kwon denied this on September 17, the last time he posted on social media.

I am not “on the run” or anything similar – for any government agency that has shown interest to communicate, we are in full cooperation and we don’t have anything to hide

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

But the evidence appears to indicate otherwise. Kwon, prosecutors say, “fled” to Singapore at the end of April, mere days before the Terra ecosystem crash, along with five Terraform executives.

South Korean police say that Kwon’s family flew out to Singapore shortly after.

Singaporean police, however, have stated that Kwon is no longer in Singapore.

Prosecutors believe they have enough evidence to prove that the Terra ecosystem coins that Kwon sold were “unregistered securities,” even though some domestic lawyers have claimed it will be hard to make these charges stick. South Korean law does not classify any form of cryptoasset as a security.

But Beoplyool TV News, a media outlet that focuses on legal affairs, quoted a financial lawyer named Cha Sang-jin as stating that if the prosecution focuses on TerraClassicUSD (UST), it may have more success.

Cha claimed that Terraform executives “emphasized” a “value linkage with the US dollar” before UST lost its peg in early May.

In proving that promises about a USD-linked stablecoin were untrue, legal experts suggested, prosecutors may be able to prove that Kwon and others “violated the Capital Market Act.”