Prosecutors claim Do Kwon has millions in Swiss account

South Korean prosecutors have revealed that former Terra CEO Do Kwon has millions of dollars stashed in a Sygnum bank account.

The Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office’s Financial Securities Crime, Joint Investigation Division, made the revelation at an April 25 press conference.

It corroborated information from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which had earlier indicated Do Kwon and TerraForm Labs (TFL) had moved 10,000 bitcoins (BTC) into a Swiss bank identified as Sygnum Bank.

The bank, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, made the news in 2017 for being the world’s first licensed digital asset bank.

According to the South Korean prosecutors, Kwon and TFL converted the 10,000 bitcoins in the Swiss account into cash, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in May 2022.

The prosecutors claim Kwon used some of that money to pay his legal representatives, the Kim & Chang law office, and the rest he transferred to other Sygnum accounts controlled by himself and TFL.

Prosecutors want Do Kwon’s accounts frozen

Per local media reports, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office has requested that Do Kwon’s Sygnum account be frozen.

However, the request may prove difficult for the Swiss to fulfill, as they also have a similar freeze request from U.S. financial regulators, and they must decide which one takes precedence.

The South Korean prosecutors have also declared their intention to return Do Kwon to the country of his birth to expedite his victims’ relief.

The Joint Investigation Unit indicted eleven people in the Terra case, including former TFL co-chair Shin Hyun-Seong.

The indictments coincide with South Korea’s parliament’s passage of a virtual asset bill, which sets the stage for establishing guidelines to protect the country’s crypto consumers and prevent unfair trading practices in the crypto industry.

The bill is part of the South Korean National Assembly’s crypto legislative package, which includes eleven virtual asset laws, four amendments to the Electronic Financial Transactions Act, a couple of changes to the financial information laws, and one amendment to the Financial Services Commission.