Breaking: Terra Exec Arrested by South Korean Authorities

Paigambar Mohan Raj
Source: Hogan Eickhoff

According to reports, Terra’s Head of General Affairs, Yoo Mo, has been arrested by South Korean Authorities. This marks the first arrest in the ongoing Terra investigation. South Korean authorities issued a bench warrant against the individual on Wednesday. Yoo is considered to be a key aide to Terraform Labs chief, Do Kwon.

Yoo is charged with violating the capital markets act, fraud, breach of duty, and others. District prosecutor Choi Sung-kook confirmed the arrest while declining to reveal the location and time of the arrest.

As of Thursday morning, the Seoul Southern District Court was preparing to issue a “direct judgment of warrant” on Yoo, in order to make a final determination over whether or not to grant the bench warrant. The decision will be made public later today.

Along with Kwon, co-founder, and CEO of Terraform Labs, local prosecutors issued an arrest order for Yoo on September 14. Furthermore, prosecutors claim that Yoo employed bot programming to artificially inflate and manipulate Terra’s cryptocurrency market price.

Circle closing in on Terra boss Do Kwon?

As per the latest reports, the South Korean government has given Kwon 14 days to submit his passport. Upon failure, his passport will be “administratively invalidated.”

Kwon is being hunted by not just the South Korean authorities, but also Interpol. It is possible that the authorities are taking down Kwon’s inner circle, before getting to him. However, Kwon has stated that he was not on the run. There were rumors that he was residing in Singapore, but there is no official word on that aspect.

The news about the arrest does seem to have had an impact on the Terra projects. At press time, LUNC (Luna Classic) was trading at $0.00029727, down by 3.5% in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, LUNA was trading at $2.53, down by 1.8% in the last 24 hours.