Do Kwon registered company in Serbia weeks after Interpol arrest warrant

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Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon registered a consultancy company in Serbia just three weeks after Interpol issued an international warrant for his arrest, according to business registry officials speaking to DL News.

Official records obtained by the outlet show a company called Codokoj22 was registered in the old town of Belgrade by Kwon and his business associate Han Chang-joon. The pair were arrested together in Montenegro for document forgery and traveling on a fake passport, after attempting to board a private jet to Dubai last week. Both deny the charges.

Kwon is the sole owner of the company, but both he and Han are named as directors. Han is the chief exec of mobile payment provider Chai Corporation, a firm started by Terraform Labs co-founder Daniel Shin. South Korean prosecutors believe Chai leaked customer information to the firm when it launched in 2018, and misappropriated funds to promote its token Luna — it crashed shortly after its sister stablecoin Terra de-pegged from the US dollar in May 2022.

Kwon and Han were able to use their Korean passports to register Codokoj22 with the Serbian Business Registry. Forged Belgian and Costa Rican passports were found on Kwon during his attempted trip to Dubai. However, South Korean authorities say they applied to revoke Kwon’s passport back in September, around three weeks before the company was officially set up. It’s unclear whether this went through.

Read more: Will arrested Terra founder Do Kwon be extradited to the US or South Korea?

DL News was able to contact the law firm that helped arrange registration for Kwon’s enterprise in Serbia. Ognjen Colić, a partner at Gecić Law Firm in Belgrade, declined to comment on grounds of “confidentiality agreements.”

He said he wasn’t aware that his client was arrested, nor that he had been charged with document forgery in Montenegro. He assured reporters that Kwon “went through all our regular security checks that [we conduct] for every client, including the Interpol website and he is not on there — you can check it yourself now.”

Another lawyer at the same firm, Miloš Petaković, is listed on the documents. He declined to comment to reporters on his involvement with Kwon.

Kwon now faces a growing pile of legal battles. South Korean authorities are reportedly travelling to Montenegro where the former fugitive is being held, likely in hopes of arranging an extradition. However, they may face competition — the US filed its own criminal charges against Kwon right after his arrest.

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