South Korea indicted Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin along with nine others on multiple charges including violations of capital markets law related to the Terra cryptocurrency project, which imploded last year.
(Bloomberg) — South Korea indicted Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin along with nine others on multiple charges including violations of capital markets law related to the Terra cryptocurrency project, which imploded last year.
Prosecutors froze 246.8 billion won ($184.7 million) in assets from the people so far, Dan Sung Han, the head prosecutor who leads the financial crime investigation department, said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Officials indicted eight people including Shin for illegal trading and two additional individuals for breach of trust. Those charged are all directly linked to Terra, including in marketing, systems development and management, prosecutors said.
The case centers around the implosion of TerraUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin, and its sister token Luna. Both collapsed in May last year, accelerating a broader $2 trillion downturn in the crypto market.
Officials said the Terra project was a “fabrication” from its inception, saying in a statement that the algorithm that helped keep TerraUSD at a stable price was impossible to get right. Shin and others charged caused “astronomical damage” for global investors, according to the statement.
“Shin has nothing to do with the Terra, Luna collapse as he left the comnpany two years before the fallout,” his lawyer, Kim Ki-dong, said in a statement. “He voluntarily returned to South Korea immediately after the collapse, and has been faithfully cooperating with the probe for over 10 months, hoping to contribute to fact finding.”
Do Kwon Arrest
Prior to the Terra collapse, those involved took 463 billion won in profit, and officials are actively tracking illegal gains, they said, adding that in the process of building Terra, those charged exposed their clients’ payment details illegally and embezzled corporate funds.
Prosecutors had recently redoubled efforts to locate and arrest Shin, a financial technology entrepreneur who helped set up Terra, a crypto project that collapsed in a $60 billion wipeout last year. A South Korean court in December rejected an arrest warrant for Shin, saying he wasn’t likely to destroy evidence or pose a flight risk.
Last month, his co-founder Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro on charges of fraud and violation of capital markets law. Kwon, a fugitive from his native South Korea, is also wanted by the US.
Korean officials are collaborating with the US on the case, they said, without providing specifics.
(Updates with comment from Shin’s lawyer in sixth paragraph.)
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