Terra’s Do Kwon Arrested in Montenegro

Tom Carreras

Mar. 23, 2023

After living on the run for six months, the Terraform Labs CEO was finally apprehended in Montenegro.

Shutterstock cover by estar 2020 (edited by Mariia Kozyr)

Key Takeaways

Montenegrin police apprehended a person believed to be Do Kwon.
South Korean authorities have provided visual confirmation but are awaiting fingerprint information.
Kwon was arrested at Podgorica airport with forged documents.

Terra frontman Do Kwon was apprehended at Podgorica airport by Montenegrin police. He was previously believed to be hiding in Serbia.

Six Months on the Run

The law has finally caught up to Do Kwon.

Montenegro Minister of the Interior Filip Adzic tweeted today that Montenegrin police had apprehended a person suspected of being Terra frontman Do Kwon.

Adzic claimed that Kwon was detained at Podgorica airport with “falsified documents”— potentially meaning forged travel documents, as Kwon’s passport was revoked by South Korean authorities in September 2022. It’s unclear whether he was attempting to enter or leave Montenegro. Podgorica is the nation’s capital city.

Adzic indicated that he was awaiting an official confirmation of Kwon’s identity. South Korean news network Yonhap reported that South Korea’s National Police Agency had already “checked the age, nationality, and name with the identification card” of the man arrested by Montenegrin police, and had confirmed his identity via photographic data. They are still awaiting fingerprint information from Montenegrin authorities.

Kwon is the CEO of Terraform Labs, which designed the Terra blockchain. Terra imploded in May 2022 when the network’s algorithmic stablecoin, UST, lost its peg and entered a death spiral, wiping out more than $40 billion from the markets.

Refusing to cooperate with criminal investigations, Kwon fled from South Korea to Singapore shortly after Terra’s collapse. Interpol issued a red notice for him in September, making him a wanted man in 195 countries. Despite the news, Kwon insisted that he was not “on the run” and kept an active presence on Twitter. South Korean authorities claimed in December that Kwon was hiding in Serbia.

Kwon was reportedly traveling with an aide named Han at the time of his arrest. According to DL News, Serbian police were on Kwon’s trail and had already begun a pre-extradition process. He may therefore have been attempting to flee Serbian authorities by entering Montenegro.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.

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