Assets Worth $104 Million Belonging to Terra Co-Founder Confined by South Korea

• by Artem
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• November 21, 2022
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• Cryptocurrency News

Daniel Shin, the co-founder of Terraform Labs, purportedly has assets worth roughly $104 million that has apparently been frozen by a court order issued by South Korean authorities. They accused him of unfairly profiting by selling the cryptocurrency LUNA at high rates just before the token fell. Shin has refuted the claim.

On Thursday, the reports revealed that Seoul Southern District Court granted the district prosecutor’s plea to freeze assets belonging to Terraform Labs co-founder Shin Hyun-Seung, alias Daniel Shin, worth around 140 billion won ($104 million). Per the pre-indictment freezing order, a suspect cannot dispose of illegal proceeds before a trial.

According to the prosecution, the co-founder of Terra sold the pre-issued cryptocurrency LUNA, now known as Luna Classic (LUNC), without properly disclosing this to investors and made “unfair” gains of roughly 140 billion Korean won. Shin allegedly admitted to the prosecutors on Thursday that he had not sold the cryptocurrency at its highest price before the token’s fall.

Forkast cited Hwang Suk-jin, an information security professor at Dongguk University and a frequent speaker on the crypto policy before the National Assembly of South Korea, as saying the following:

“It’s a problem with pre-mining. It’s because they did not make proper disclosure in issuing the tokens.” The professor continued, saying that if investors “thought 1,000 tokens have been issued and in fact 10,000 have been issued, investors inevitably suffer losses.”

Investigations are being conducted into allegations that Shin and Chai Corp., a local payments technology business he established, misused consumer data when introducing Chai’s Terra payment services. Local law enforcement allegedly conducted a raid on the payments business on Thursday.

Along with looking into the collapse of LUNA, South Korean prosecutors have also filed an arrest order for Kwon Do-Hyung, alias Do Kwon, who co-founded Terraform Labs with Shin. He is also the subject of a Red Notice from Interpol. The South Korean government said last month that it had blocked Kwon’s cryptocurrency holdings. Kwon, though, denied ownership of the frozen coins.