비트코인과 다른 화폐와의 차이와 동일성.
금융 관련법과 관계
한국과 미국의 범죄 형량 차이.
권도형의 사업 방식.
뉴스 속 경제] "비트코인과 테라는 다르다"‥권도형의 죄는?
입력 2023-03-31 07:40
앵커
테라-루나의 창업자 권도형 대표가 몬테네그로에서 체포된 이후, 우리나라로 송환될지, 언제쯤 가능할지가 관심사입니다.
송환되더라도 테라-루나 같은 암호화폐를 무엇으로 볼지에 따라 처벌 수위가 결정된다고 합니다.
뉴스 속 경제 이성일 기자입니다.
리포트
암호화폐 테라-루나의 공동 창업자 권도형 대표가 체포된 이유는 문서위조 혐의.
몬테네그로에 입국, 출국하는 과정에서 위조된 여권을 사용했다는 주장입니다.
싱가포르에 머물던 권대표는 추적이 시작되자, 두바이, 세르비아를 거쳐, 몬테네그로에 도피했다가, 공항에서 붙잡혔습니다.
[마르코 코바치/몬테네그로 법무장관(3월29일)]
"권도형씨 등은 위조한 것으로 의심되는 여권을 이용해 출국 시도를 했습니다."
증권 시세 조작, 질못된 투자 정보 제공 같은 혐의를 권대표는 완강히 부인하고 있습니다.
무엇보다 테라-루나를 주식과 같은 성격을 가진 '증권'이 아니라, 가상자산, 그 자체로 봐야한다는 입장입니다.
권씨를 추적하는 우리 검찰과 미국의 증권 감독기관은 정반대 생각입니다.
테라-루나를 증권으로 보고, 권 대표에게 수십년 징역형을 선고하고, 50조원 넘는 투자자 손해를 물어내도록 엄벌해야 한다는 입장입니다.
증권은 보통 다수의 투자자에게 돈을 받아 사업을 벌일 때 필요합니다.
사업에서 나온 이익을 다시 받을 수 있다는 증표인데, 대표적인 것 '주식'입니다.
생판 모르는 사람의 돈을 받아 사업을 하려면, 법이 정한 까다로운 의무를 지켜야 하고, 이를 어기면 무거운 처벌을 받게 됩니다.
코인을 발행한 사람도 주식과 마찬가지로 의무를 지켜야 한다는 것이 검찰과 규제기관의 생각입니다.
미국의 증권거래위원회가 3년전 등록하지 않은 '불법 증권'을 공개발행한 혐의로, 한 코인 발행업체를 기소했습니다.
코인을 발행할 때 투자자를 공개모집했다거나, 코인을 예치한 투자자에게 이익을 약속했다면, 주식과 비슷한 규제를 해야 한다는 입장입니다.
대표적 가상화폐인 비트코인은 의외로 기소 대상에서 빠졌습니다.
운영자가 없는 '탈중앙'화된 시스템 덕에, 증권거래 위원회가 다른 코인들과 성격이 다르다고 봤기 때문입니다.
하지만, 테라와 루나는 증권 시세 조정 등 불법 행위를 한 혐의로, 증권거래위원회로부터 52조원 소송을 당했습니다.
우리나라 검찰도 투자자에게 허위 정보를 제공한 혐의로 체포 영장을 발부받아 권대표를 추적해 왔습니다.
[김자봉 연구위원/금융연구원]
"(코인을 증권으로 보려는) 제 1 취지는 투자자 보호인데, 내부자 거래와 같은 행위도 당연히 불법으로 해서는 안 되는 거고 타인의 자금을 모집했기 때문에 책임을 지도록 하는 것이 투자자 보호의 핵심인 거죠."
몬테네그로 당국이 체포된 권 대표를 어느 나라로 인도할지에 관심이 모아집니다.
한국 국적인 권씨가 처음으로 투자자를 모집한 한국에 송환될 것이라는 관측과, 투자자 규모가 크고 처벌이 엄격한 미국으로 보내질 것이라는 관측이 맞섭니다.
하지만, 몬테네그로 당국은 위조여권 사용 범죄부터 처벌하겠다는 입장이라, 신병 인도까지 긴 시간이 걸릴 가능성도
있습니다.
MBC뉴스 이성일입니다.
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387,773 views Apr 1, 2023 #권도형 #테라 #루나
00:00 '테라·루나' 권도형 형기 끝나야 소환‥한국·미국이 송환 신청 (2023.03.30/뉴스데스크/MBC)
02:04 권도형 "도피중 VIP 대접"‥압수물엔 흥미로운 정보 다수 (2023.03.29/뉴스데스크/MBC)
04:11 '2인자' 신현성 구속영장‥피해자들 "권도형 미국 보내라" (2023.03.27/뉴스데스크/MBC)
Singapore police begin probe linked to Do Kwon’s Terraform Labs: Bloomberg
Pradipta Mukherjee
March 6, 2023·1 min read
Singapore’s police have begun investigations linked to Terraform Labs that was co-founded by fugitive Do Kwon, according to a Bloomberg report.
See related article: Why is it harder to arrest Terra-Luna founder Do Kwon than FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried?
Fast facts
Singapore-based Terraform Labs and its chief Kwon Do-hyung, known as Do Kwon, was charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month for defrauding investors through “a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud.”
Do Kwon reportedly left his home in Singapore last year after the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) issued a “red notice” asking agencies worldwide to help locate Do Kwon.
The US$40 billion implosion of the Terra stablecoin and Luna cryptocurrency in May last year had led to a series of collapses in the crypto industry in the months that followed.
Do Kwon had said that while the collapse of the Terra-Luna stablecoin was his responsibility, there was no fraud.
The South Korean national is reportedly residing in Serbia. The Seoul Prosecutors’ Office told Forkast last month that Serbian authorities will “actively cooperate” in locating Do Kwon.
See related article: Terra CEO Do Kwon, wanted in South Korea, left Singapore and flew to parts unknown via Dubai
Why is it harder to arrest Terra-Luna founder Do Kwon than FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried?
South Korea’s attempts to extradite the founder of the collapsed Terra-Luna stablecoin will remain hamstrung while the courts in Seoul dispute the charges against him.
Terra chief Do Kwon and FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried | Why is it harder to arrest Terra-Luna founder Do Kwon than FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried? | do kwon news, kwon do hyung, do kwon terra, terraform labs, terra-luna, terra luna
Terraform Labs co-founder and CEO Kwon Do-hyung (left) and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (right) | Image: Terraform Labs, FTX.com
Some analysts say the multiple cryptocurrency bankruptcies in 2022, including the FTX exchange in November, are linked to the US$40 billion implosion of the Terra stablecoin and Luna cryptocurrency in May last year, arguing that collapse set off a domino chain of failures across the industry.
But while FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested on multiple charges of fraud, the founder of Terra-Luna, South Korea’s Kwon Do-hyung, is reportedly living in Serbia. That’s despite an Interpol “Red Notice” for his arrest and prosecutors in Seoul charging him with fraud.
What’s more, when the Red Notice was in force – which requests law enforcement in the 195 countries that are members of Interpol to arrest the named individual – the Terra-Luna chief, typically known as Do Kwon, walked out of his home in Singapore, caught a flight to Dubai and then took a connection to Serbia where he registered his address with local authorities.
Do Kwon on Twitter and elsewhere has said the Terra-Luna stablecoin, which he called his life’s work, may have failed and that was his responsibility, but it was not as a result of fraud.
According to Koo Tae-on, a lawyer at South Korean law firm Lin who specializes in blockchain and crypto cases, attempts to extradite Do Kwon from Serbia have failed because prosecutors have so far been unable to convince a court in Seoul that the charges against him can stand. An additional complication is South Korea and Serbia do not have an extradition agreement.
“The prosecutors have failed to establish the fraud charges as their arrest warrants for other Terra-Luna employees were rejected by the court along with their characterization of Luna as an investment security,” Koo said in an interview with Forkast. “That is interfering with Kwon’s extradition.”
Do Kwon has been accused of violating South Korea’s Capital Markets Law, but proving this is a “long shot,” Koo said in a written response to questions.
“Financial regulators introduced investment contract securities to the Capital Markets Act in 2006 — crypto tokens were non-existent then, and obviously were not included in the regulation,” Koo said.
The law will likely need to be amended before the local court accepts the Luna token as a security, he added.
Who failed?
In another twist in the tale, if a South Korean court acknowledges the Luna token as a security it may then hold that financial regulators were negligent and have a responsibility in the collapse, Koo said.
“Terra and Luna were listed on exchanges operated under the Financial Intelligence Unit’s supervision, which could mean that the regulators will be held liable for the illegal securities transactions.”
Before the Terra-Luna failure, the USD-pegged Terra was the third largest stablecoin in the market, and its sister Luna was the seventh largest cryptocurrency by market value.
As Kwon’s project grew, the 31-year-old who studied computer science at Stanford University, gained a mass following and was seen as a next-generation leader for the crypto industry, along with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a physics graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The collapse of Terra-Luna, which happened in a matter of days from May 7, 2022, saw the value of the Luna token plunge from around $120 to zero, causing losses to more than a quarter of a million investors in South Korea alone. Many claimed their life savings evaporated in the crash. Thousands of more people around the world were also invested in the project.
South Korean prosecutors launched their investigation of Terraform Labs, which ran the stablecoin platform, in May after investors filed a fraud complaint against Kwon and Terraform Labs co-founder Shin Hyun-seung.
Hwang Suk-jin, professor of information security at South Korea’s Dongguk University, told Forkast that fraud charges need to prove a deceitful act and the disposal of wrongfully earned income.
“Hence the prosecutors will need to establish the right and wrong in each one of Terra’s crypto and decentralized finance products,” Hwang said. This will involve a long process of legal dispute between Terraform Labs and the prosecutors.
Going quiet
Kwon, who is known for his commentary on Twitter, has not shown any activity on the social media platform since Dec. 11. He didn’t respond to Forkast requests for comment in this story.
The public spotlight on Kwon has dimmed in the glare of Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest and because of the lack of developments in the case.
South Korean authorities last reported on the investigation on Dec. 14 last year to say Kwon had registered his address in Serbia. Local media reports stated that prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice have asked Serbian authorities to help extradite Kwon.
Choi Sung-kook, a prosecutor in the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office, declined to comment on the Serbian response when asked by Forkast via a text message on Thursday. The Ministry of Justice also declined to comment.
Interpol said in an email response it does not comment on specific cases and individuals, adding that the majority of Red Notices are not made public and are restricted to law enforcement use only.
Interpol issued the Red Notice on Kwon in September at the request of South Korean prosecutors, but the power of the notice depends on the willingness of member countries to cooperate, Arantxa Geijo Jiménez, an attorney in international criminal law at Spain-based law firm Geijo & Associates, told Forkast in a written interview.
“Countries have an interest in arresting suspects wanted by other countries if they expect or desire reciprocal support,” said Jiménez.
South Korea’s Ministry of Justice told Forkast that both Korea and Serbia are members of the European Council Convention on the Extradition of Offenders and the European Council Convention on Criminal Justice, despite not having a bilateral treaty.
South Korean attorney Koo said the European Council Convention is effective in extradition cases, but repeated that such international cooperation is hindered by doubts over the charges against Kwon in South Korea. Jiménez also weighed in on that issue.
“Dual criminality is a general principle of extradition,” said Jiménez. “Basically, it allows for extradition when an act is considered a crime in both the jurisdiction of the requesting state as well as the sending state.”
Blurry lines
The legal categorization of cryptocurrencies remains unclear in other jurisdictions.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged that U.S.-based Ripple Labs raised US$1.3 billion through sales of an unregistered security, the XRP cryptocurrency, and the case has been in the courts for two years.
Dongguk University’s Hwang says it is possible that Kwon could file a legal complaint against Serbian law enforcement if they try to extradite him, using the lack of clarity of the charges against him and the rulings of courts in Seoul to his advantage.
“Such litigation may drag over three, four years before Kwon is actually brought back to Korea,” Hwang said.
In multiple interviews, Kwon has stated that South Korea’s charges against him were “baseless” and “highly political” in nature, saying he is open to cooperating with any authorities to prove the charges wrong.
If Kwon is confident that he is innocent, perhaps the best place to argue that is South Korea, Hwang said. That’s the place “to establish the right and wrong of the charges.”
In a recent development, Virginia-based private investment company Albright Capital dropped its lawsuit against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon, according to a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed in the U.S. District Court on January 9.
The lawsuit had alleged that Terraform Labs had violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) by operating its stablecoin as a “Ponzi scheme.”
Terraform Labs said in an email this development comes on top of the fact South Korean prosecutors have had nine of their nine detention warrants for former and current Terraform staff rejected by the courts.
Terraform added in a Twitter thread that the voluntary dismissal of the Albright case has “confirmed that the facts are on our side, and more are and will continue to come to light.”
(Updates to add new paragraph four.)
AUTHOR PROFILE
DANNY PARK
Danny is a journalist at Forkast.News. Originally from South Korea, Danny has produced content for media companies in Korea, Hong Kong and China. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism and Business Marketing from the University of Hong Kong.
Montenegro hints U.S. may get to extradite Terra fugitive Do Kwon ahead of South Korea
11
Danny Park
Thu, March 30, 2023 at 4:27 AM EDT·2 min read
The U.S. may have gained an edge in a race with South Korea to extradite Terraform Labs chief Kwon Do-hyung from Montenegro on charges of fraud related to the collapse of the US$40 billion Terra-Luna cryptocurrency project in May last year, according to a report by Yonhap News on Wednesday. The report cites Montenegro Justice Minister Marko Kovac saying Washington requested the extradition of the South Korean national before Seoul, following his arrest in the country on March 23 for allegedly traveling on false travel documents.
See related article: Montenegro to hold Terra-Luna fugitive Do Kwon for 30 days, says Yonhap News
Fast facts
Although the U.S. submitted the extradition request ahead of South Korea, Kovac said he cannot confirm which country will eventually take custody of Kwon, South Korea’s Yonhap News reported.
While South Korea requested the extradition of both Kwon and Han Chang-joon, Terraform Labs’ chief financial officer who was traveling with him, the U.S. reportedly requested only Kwon.
Kovac said before any extradition, Kwon has to first face charges in Montenegro of traveling on forged travel documents. Conviction could lead to a prison sentence of a minimum three months to a maximum five years under local laws.
His legal representative in Montenegro said Kwon is ready to fight his case up to the local Supreme Court if necessary, claiming his travel documents are valid, according to Yonhap. He and Han can be detained for 30 days while police investigate the case, a local prosecutor said Monday.
The US$40 billion Terra-Luna stablecoin and crypto project collapsed in May last year and Kwon is wanted in South Korea on charges including fraud and capital markets law violations. New York prosecutors are also looking to extradite Kwon on charges including securities, commodities and wire fraud.
Do Kwon left his home in Singapore late last year after Interpol issued a “red notice’’ for his apprehension at the request of South Korea. Kwon has denied all the charges against him. Terraform Labs has stated that South Korea’s investigation of Terra-Luna has become highly politicized and claims the accusations are baseless.
Meanwhile, a South Korean court is reviewing a second request from local prosecutors to arrest Terraform Labs co-founder Shin Hyun-seung, for charges including fraud, breach of trust and violation of the capital markets law. Shin has rejected the accusations, claiming he cut ties with Kwon and Terraform in 2020, or well before the company imploded.
See related article: Terraform Labs founder Daniel Shin again questioned by South Korea prosecutors over stablecoin collapse
