Do Kwon May Have Outsmarted Authorities When He Made A Slick Move Following Montenegro Arrest

Do Kwon, the embattled co-founder and CEO of the blockchain firm Terraform Labs (TFL), may have made a slick move following his arrest in Montenegro in March that outsmarted authorities.

Kwon is a man of many parts, but in the past few months since the collapse of the so-called algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and token LUNA, several claims and pieces of evidence have hinted that the crypto executive knows exactly what to do when it comes to safeguarding his wealth.

Based on multiple reports chronicling Kwon's activities after Terra came crashing down in May 2022, it looks like the TFL co-founder already outlined the things he must do before authorities got a hold of him.

Dan Sunghan, director of the financial crime investigation bureau at the Seoul Southern District Prosecution Service, told Bloomberg that South Korean authorities are currently trying to locate $29 million in crypto assets that were moved out of Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), the TFL-founded non-profit organization and open-source software created to help build a truly decentralized economy.

The crypto assets, which were reportedly funneled out of LFG after Kwon was arrested in late March, were likely moved by Kwon personally or by someone he gave instructions, Sunghan speculated.

"We're assuming that Do Kwon, or someone under his direction, took out the amount and moved it to another wallet, not to Sygnum, and cashed it out somewhere else," Sunghan said after Kwon's arrest, according to the outlet.

He added that while they are not yet aware of the crypto assets' whereabouts, the team is currently "tracking" them.

The funds and assets held by LFG have been the subject of a lot of discussions and speculations online since Terra collapsed because it is believed to have been personally set up by the crypto kingpin to help defend the TerraUSD (UST).

Aside from the $29 million crypto assets moved in late March of this year, Sunghan's team is also tracking down over $10,000 in Bitcoin, which was mentioned in the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in February.

Court filings revealed that the SEC accused Kwon of transferring more than 10,000 in Bitcoin from Terraform Labs and Luna Foundation Guard and then converting some of these tokens into cash through a Swiss bank account sometime in May 2022.

South Korean prosecutors are also looking into the over $13 million funds Kwon and his associates still hold at Sygnum Bank, the crypto-focused lender based in Zurich, Switzerland.

After news about the SEC lawsuit surfaced online in February, Kwon immediately tweeted that he had "stolen no money and never had 'secret cashouts,'" adding that he was "happy to address any specific allegation" just like his claim that he was "not on the run" and exerting "zero-efforts" to hide when it was reported that his name was on the red notice list.