South Korean prosecutors have revealed that Do Kwon, the CEO of Terraform Labs, sent a significant sum of money to a prominent law firm in the country just before the Terra stablecoin and Luna cryptocurrency collapsed a year ago.
The move sent shockwaves throughout the industry and created a domino effect. Over the following months, Kwon sent a total of $3 million to Kim & Chang, which is now being investigated by Singaporean law enforcement.
If Kwon is found to have liquidated illicit cryptocurrency assets to pay for legal representation, embezzlement charges may be brought against him. Both countries hope to seize the funds.
Kim & Chang is a well-known law firm in South Korea that represents high-profile clients in numerous scandalous cases. It represented Oxy Reckit Benckiser in a case that began in 2011, where a humidifier sanitizer provided by the British company killed more than 14,000 people in South Korea.
The law firm also represented Audi Volkswagen Korea in its diesel emission scandal in 2018. Kim & Chang handled Uber chief Travis Kalanick’s case, where he paid an $18,000 fine for illegally launching Uber in the country back in 2014.
The timing of Kwon’s payments to Kim & Chang is also noteworthy. Sending money to legal representatives before the crash occurred suggests that Kwon knew the event was about to happen and pre-emptively expected legal trouble. Prosecutors believe that this will strengthen their fraud case against Kwon.
Attorney Choi Chang-min told KBS News that “The fact that they sent a large sum of money to a large law firm before the crash could be seen as a situation in which they were prepared for judicial risks such as the prosecution’s investigation.”
Kwon’s crypto assets are still missing, and on Thursday, it was reported that South Korea would seize $5 million of his funds. He is currently being held in a Montenegrin jail, where he will face charges of document forgery before being extradited to either South Korea or the US.