Is the founder of Terra Do Kwon hiding in Serbia?
2 min readDo Kwon has been swallowed up by the face of the earth for months. The founder of the collapsed Terra ecosystem is on the wanted list in 194 countries. The potential whereabouts range from Singapore to Dubai to Russia and most recently to Serbia. The latter could actually be a hot lead. Because like Bloomberg reported, South Korean investigators are said to have recently sent a team to the Balkan country. The Seoul prosecutor’s office called the reports “not false” but gave no information on the 31-year-old’s exact location.
Serbia: the perfect place to hide away?
However, Serbia is good as a safe haven for Do Kwon. In principle, there is no extradition agreement between Serbia and South Korea. An exchange would be possible via the European extradition agreement, because both states agreed to the agreement. However, according to Seung Jae-Hyeon from the Korea Criminal Justice Policy Institute, Serbia must be offered incentives in order to actually implement extradition across from the daily newspaper ChosunBIZ.
In addition, Serbia is a crypto-friendly country. At the end of June 2021, the country legalized the trading of Bitcoin and Co. The Terra founder may have chosen the country to protect his crypto deposits from further confiscations. South Korean prosecutors froze $40 million in cryptocurrencies in October last year.
In addition, neighboring Kosovo offers an additional escape option. The country is one of the few states that is not a member of the international police organization Interpol. This means that the Terra founder could quickly withdraw to the neighboring country if Serbia gets too hot. Provided, of course, that he can bypass passport control.
Terra founder: “I’m not on the run”
Meanwhile, the Terra boss continues to deny any attempts to escape. In a video interview with podcaster Laura Shin, Do Kwon justified the secrecy surrounding his whereabouts with “security concerns”. He also asked forgiveness from those injured in the Terra crash.
However, the crypto space does not really buy his remorse. “Then why didn’t he return the stolen funds?” asks Ari Paul of crypto investment firm Blocktower Twitter. The Terra founder then denied the allegation of theft again.
