From the Terra/UST crash that shook the entire cryptocurrency market to the fact that Interpol - the International Criminal Police Organization - issued a global arrest warrant for Terra founder - Do Kwon, now the story adds a new twist regarding the massive amount of Bitcoin value.
According to a report from Coindesk Korea, shortly after the arrest warrant for Terraform Labs (TFL) CEO Kwon Do-hyung was issued, about 3313 BTC (equivalent to over $66 million) from LFG - the nonprofit organization founded by CEO Kwon established in January 2022 as a reserve for stablecoin TerraUSD - was unexpectedly moved to two overseas cryptocurrency exchanges.
After research, CryptoQuant said that this wallet was created on September 15 on Binance, then transferred this amount of BTC to KUCOIN and OKX. Specifically, through the LFG account on Binance, the transactions of 1354 Bitcoin to Kucoin exchange were made in 3 consecutive days from September 15 to 18, and 1959 BTC was sent to OKX.
Immediately, the Seoul District Prosecutors' Office sent a request to freeze these assets to both exchanges. Although Kucoin strictly complied, OKX ignored this request and suggested that the money may have moved to another exchange.
This action was taken to conduct the investigation of “Suspicion of money laundering, concealment and escape”. Prosecutors noticed the time this amount of BTC transferred right after the arrest warrant was issued, so it was very suspicious. Not only that, coincidentally on the day a large amount of BTC moved to the 2 exchanges, Kwon confirmed on Twitter that: "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."
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
A former prosecutorial official said:
“In a normal criminal investigation, if a large amount of money is moved from the suspect’s account after the issuance of an arrest warrant, it is natural to conduct an intensive investigation with suspicion of laundering and concealment. We must first check whether it will be used as an evacuation fund.”
An incumbent prosecutor added:
"We had to first check if it was used as an evacuation fund."
This is not the first time a suspicious transfer has been made since Kwon's arrest warrant was issued. TheCryptoBasic reported in early September, Kwon transferred a whopping $250,000 worth of USDC into a mysterious wallet so it's more than likely both times were "tolls" for his escape journey. The event will continue to be updated as new information becomes available.
