South Korean Prosecutors Indict Terra Co-Founder and Nine Others

Daniel Shin, who co-founded the now-defunct Terraform Labs with Do Kwon, was indicted by South Korean prosecutors along with nine other individuals on Tuesday. Kwon and others are facing multiple charges, including fraud, breach of trust, and embezzlement.

South Korea Froze Approx. $185M in Assets Tied to Shin and Nine Others

South Korean prosecutors indicted Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin on Tuesday on several charges, including breaking the capital markets law, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office told the press. Apart from Shin, nine other individuals tied to the collapsed blockchain company were also indicted.

According to Bloomberg, the prosecutors froze 246.8 billion won ($184.7 million) in assets belonging to indictees. Eight of them, including Shin, were indicted for illegal trading, while two additional individuals were accused of breach of trust. The prosecutors said all the indictees were directly linked to Terraform Labs and the project’s marketing, systems development, and management operations.

South Korean officials said the Terra project was a “fabrication” from its beginning, adding that the algorithm maintaining the price of the TerraUST stablecoin was impossible to fix. Prosecutors said Shin and other defendants dealt “astronomical damage” to global investors.

Before the project imploded, Shin and his collaborators snatched 463 billion won in profit after exposing Terra clients’ payment information illegally and stealing corporate funds. Prosecutors are still searching for the illegal gains.

Pressure Mounts Against Do Kwon

The indictment against Shin comes shortly after S. Korean prosecutors ramped up efforts to locate and arrest the 38-year-old, who, alongside Terra’s former CEO Do Kwon, helped establish a crypto empire that wiped out $60 billion in crypto funds in May 2022.

Not long after the implosion, Kwon went missing and was indicted by prosecutors in late 2022 on similar allegations of violating the Capital Markets Act. In September, Interpol issued a red notice, asking global law enforcement agencies to find and arrest the 31-year-old Kwon.

Kwon was arrested last month in Montenegro and is currently detained there for passport forgery. According to local reports, Kwon was caught while trying to leave Montenegro on a private jet. Both South Korea and the United States are seeking Kwon’s extradition in connection with the Terra collapse.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist