Terra Employees Banned from Leaving South Korea
Former and current employees of Terraform Labs, the company behind the stablecoin UST and its sister token LUNA, were sanctioned by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutorโs Office a travel ban to eliminate the possibility of key officials within the company fleeing abroad to avoid further investigation, local media outlet JTBC reported.
The investigation was carried out after the collapse of UST and LUNA last May, and affected 200,000 Koreans.
The ban was confirmed by Daniel Hong, former developer of Terraform Labs, on Twitter:
โStop asking me why I couldn’t make it to NYC frens. This is why: the Korean government imposed an exit ban for all ex-@terra_money employees today.โ
Hong stressed that none of the Terraform Labsโ former and current employees were notified about the sanctioned ban, but the Prosecutorโs Office verified to him that the Office does not notify people to avoid the persons under investigation destroying evidence and leaving the country.
โTBH, people being treated as potential criminals like this is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable. Bet anyone who were willing to cooperate would no longer want to after this madness,โ he added.
Hong also clarified that he is willing to cooperate with the investigation.
The departure ban imposed by the office is effective as long as the investigation is ongoing.
After the collapse of UST and LUNA, a financial crimes investigation unit dubbed as โGrim Reapers of Yeouidoโ was revived by the South Korean Government to investigate it. Its team consists of various regulators and is focused on prosecuting fraud and illegal trading schemes.
Exchanges available in South Korea also united to form a new emergency system that would ensure regulatory compliance. If a situation similar to Terra-LUNAโs collapse will happen, the new emergency system will be activated within 24 hours.
While the company is facing this investigation, TerraFirm Labs just launched LUNA 2.0.
LUNA 2.0 hit an all-time high of $18.87 on May 28, 2022, and had an all-time low of $1.66 last June 18, 2022. Its current price is $2.05. according to the data of CoinGecko.
Just last week, Do Kwon denied that he allegedly cashed out $80 million every month consistently for nearly three years before the collapse of LUNA and UST.
Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) is also looking into selling its assets or getting rescued by another entity after confirming that it suffered an unprecedented loss because of the recent decline in the cryptocurrency market prices. They invested more than $200 million in LUNA.
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