The prosecutor's office in Switzerland seized about 26 million dollars in digital assets and US dollars belonging to the Korean "cryptocurrency king" Do Kwon, the specialized portal reports.BeInCrypto".
Korean media on Saturday, June 24 reported that Kwon had funds stored in Swiss digital asset bank Signum, which bills itself as the world's first digital asset bank and has branches in Switzerland, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.
Do Kwon and Korean citizen Hong Chan Jun were sentenced on June 19 in the Basic Court in Podgorica to four months in prison each for falsifying travel documents. They were arrested on March 23 at the Podgorica airport, when they used forged Costa Rican passports during passport control on a flight to Dubai.
Since Kwon is facing criminal prosecution in South Korea and the US, "BeInCrypto" recalls, investigators were looking for ways to trace his assets. Swiss prosecutors froze the assets at the request of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and New York federal prosecutors.
South Korea and the United States are seeking the extradition of Do Kwon, due to a fraud involving tens of billions of dollars through cryptocurrencies.
An amount higher than earlier estimates
The amount of frozen assets is twice as high as earlier estimates by the prosecutors. South Korean prosecutors told Bloomberg earlier that Kwon and his aides hold more than $13 million in Signum.
According to "BeInCrypto", American and Swiss investigators have probably found other assets that were not previously identified. The US SEC alleged that Kwon sent 10.000 bitcoins to a Swiss account.
"With some of the assets linked to the Terra Luna debacle now frozen, victims of the incident that wiped around $40 billion from the crypto market can hope to be compensated for their losses," the report said.
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