Crypto entrepreneur Milojko Spajić was one of the first to invest as a natural person in the company of South Korean citizen Do Kwon Teraform Labs (Teraform) in April 2018, signing a contract a few days before it was founded under that name in Singapore, according to the documents of the US Securities and Exchange Agency. of value (SEC), but also statements of the current prime minister and data on the rise and fall of the company and its founder from the relevant media, specialized in the cryptocurrency market.
Five years later, it turned out that Teraform was the company behind the pyramid scheme, in which over $40 billion was lost by both initial investors and many people who bought its products on crypto exchanges and kept their money in Do Kwon's crypto company, whose liquidation was announced a few days ago.
So far, Spajić has never explicitly claimed that Do Kwon, who is currently in Montenegro waiting for the Montenegrin courts to decide whether to extradite him to the United States of America or South Korea for trial for serious crimes, defrauded him personally of 75.000 US dollars, but only the company. which was either his or where he worked, depending on the statement to the statement.
USD 75.000 is exactly the amount that Spajić committed to pay in the contract dated April 17, 2018 with Teraform, the first day of fundraising for this project, according to the documents submitted to the New York court.
The financial expert explained to "Vijesta" that Spajić thereby acquired 750.000 luna tokens at a price of 10 cents, which was the lowest of all that other investors paid in the later stages of the project, before going on the market, because in the first stage the investment is the most risky due to which is why the price of luna tokens was so low.
On that day and the following day, money for the initial development and research of Do Kwon's company's crypto project, totaling about $13,75 million, was paid by another 14 individuals and 10 companies, according to data from a table compiled by SEC Assistant Chief Accountant Avron Elbaum 19 in April of this year submitted to the New York court, before which Teraform and Do Kwon were tried.
Tera cryptocurrency is a financial product, obtained by blockchain technology, which, among others, Teraform placed on the stock exchanges, deceiving investors that their technology is used by the famous Korean crypto payment system Chai for its business, the SEC claimed in court. Another trick to investors, the SEC claimed, was that the market value of one Ter coin would always automatically equal one US dollar, which was not true. The Luna token, which could later be sold, served for Teraform to raise initial capital, and if the project had succeeded, it would have brought investors the biggest profit.
PHOTO: A document from the US Securities and Exchange Agency that mentions Spajić
Teraform Labs LTD was registered in Singapore on April 23, 2018, and by the summer of 2021, in several investment rounds, at least 81 contracts worth over 65 million dollars were concluded, and about 35 million were paid into the accounts and crypto wallets of this firm dollars in cash and close to 24 million in cryptocurrencies, or a total of close to 59 million dollars, Elbaum claims.
In his table, the amounts from the contract are listed, as well as the amounts paid in cash to Teraform's account, but the column for some investors about the payment remained empty, including Spajić. According to the SEC document, it can be concluded that these investors, including Spajić, paid the contracted amount in cryptocurrencies, which was also confirmed by a financial expert with whom Vijesti communicated.
The value of the luna cryptotoken at one point in the spring of 2022 reached over 119 dollars, only to be close to zero a few days later. If Spajic didn't sell any of his 750.000 luna tokens before the collapse, he lost close to $90 million, which is what the tokens were worth in early April 2022.
Neither Spajić nor the Government Public Relations Service answered the question of "Vijesti" how many luna tokens the prime minister had just before the collapse.
Several interlocutors of "Vijesti" said that Spajić complained to them that he lost a huge amount of money due to the collapse of the moon/terra. One of the financial experts told the newspaper that Spajić most likely kept at least part of these tokens, because if he had sold them all earlier "he would not have been cheated".
However, if he sold his tokens at a price higher than what he bought them for, he had to pay capital gains tax in Montenegro, where he is resident as of 2020 at the latest.
Teraform and Do Kwon were found responsible for defrauding investors, and recently entered into a court settlement with the SEC, according to which the company must pay 4,37 billion in fines and interest, and the failed cryptocurrency king about 200 million dollars in a fund to compensate for damages to investors from his account in the Swiss Sygnum Bank number 84.002.088-00, as well as from other accounts, cryptocurrencies and tokens PYTH, which he acquired on May 18, 2021 based on the Token Grant Agreement with the company Tribal invest Corp.
According to the settlement, the firm is prohibited from dealing in cryptocurrencies and Do Kwon is prohibited from being an officer or director of any public company.
So far, Spajić has claimed that his company, or the company he worked for, was defrauded of $75.000. His Linkedin account states that from March 2017 to December 2020 he was a partner in the Singaporean investment company Das Capital SG. Those companies are not in the table that Elbaum from the SEC submitted to the court as evidence.
"Do Kwon is a swindler who defrauded millions of people, including my friends and the company I worked for, which invested in this project in early 2018," Spajić announced on June 5 last year, six days before the parliamentary elections.
On that day, it was disclosed that Do Kwon, in a letter from custody to the then Prime Minister Dritan Abazović, Minister of Justice Marko Kovac and special prosecutor Vladimir Novović, announced that he had spoken with Spajić about the financing of the Europe Now Movement. Spajić and PES repeatedly denied that Do Kwon financed them and accused Abazović of creating the affair for pre-election purposes. And Do Kvon's lawyer, Goran Rodić, cast doubt on parts of his letter, alluding to the fact that he did not write it independently.
This morning, one of Spajić's closest collaborators at the time, Andrej Milović, showed part of the contract with Teraform to the cameras of TV A plus.
"Spajić said yesterday, in 2018, when I was running a fund in Singapore, I myself participated and bought tokens that were later listed on the stock exchange... We have a contract where it can be seen that Mr. Spajić was the one who bought, we see that 75.000 dollars were bought for the fund he represented on April 23, 2018... So we are, he invested in it, many people were harmed, I invested in the Tera token on the stock market, millions of people were cheated by Dokwon and Tera when it collapsed that project. So both Spajić and the funds, the whole world was deceived, that's why the FBI is looking for him, that's why South Korea is also pursuing him...", Milović said.
The contract he showed, however, states that the buyer of the tokens is luna Spajić and not his company, that the contract was concluded on April 17, and that the date of execution of the contract is April 23.
In the table that Elbaum, the assistant chief accountant of the SEC, submitted as evidence to the Federal Court of the Southern District of the State of New York, Spajić's name is in the 16th place, among a total of 81 first investors until the summer of 2021, companies and individuals, in Do Kwon's project. The table clearly indicates when the investor in luna tokens is a company and when it is a natural person.
"The company I worked for in 2018 was defrauded by a man for 75.000 euros," repeated Spajić in the final debate on June 9, 2023 on Television Vijesti.
When asked by Petar Komnenić, Spajić said that he "never received a single cent from Mr. Do Kwon".
He confirmed that he met Do Kwon in 2018 when they met several times regarding the investment in Teraform.
"There was a meeting in 2018, when the company I worked for, as I just said, invested in a project, i.e. the project of Daniel Shin, who was the main man of that company... and that's how I met Mr. Do for the first time in my life Kvona. We are, if anything, the injured party, that is, my company where I worked in 2018. There are no other financial relationships," Spajić said.
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Cryptocurrency media reported yesterday that prosecutors in Seoul, where Shin is on trial, have submitted correspondence between him and Do Kwon in which he suggests creating "fake transactions that look real" to inflate the activity of crypto payment app Chai, of which Shin was a director. He reportedly responded by suggesting that it "be tested on a small scale." The same correspondence is found in SEC filings.
Spajic confirmed that he met Do Kwon "for the last time" in 2022, when the value of his cryptocurrencies began to fall.
"Last year was the last time I met him. That's when the affair just started, so the price dropped from $100," Spajić said, claiming that he didn't know at the time that Do Kwon was on the Interpol warrant that was issued in September. in 2021
Do Kwon was hiding in Belgrade at the time, he claims in the letter that it was "at the end of the year" in the apartment where he lived and in another apartment where Spajić's ex-partner and child live, and that they met in 2018.
"He was an active investor in the cryptocurrency industry at the time and we became friends with a very successful investment relationship. As we were early on investing in a new industry, we were both successful, and my understanding is that he retired from the business to spend energy in dealing with politics in his country," Do Kwon allegedly wrote in the letter, Montenegrin media reported.
In the debate before the June elections, Spajić, talking about the meetings with Do Kwon, said that at the time "we didn't know if it was a fraud, because at that time it was not known if it was a fraud, if it was hacking, if the man was not guilty, because price dropped from $100 to zero".
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, he said that he also discussed with Do Kwon in Belgrade in 2022 the recovery of the South Korean citizen's project after the crash. Neither Spajić nor the Government Public Relations Service answered the question of "Vijesti" whether he asked Do Kwon to return the invested money or compensate him for the lost profit, and if not, why not and if so, whether he compensated him, and if so in what way and in what amount.
It is not known whether Spajić, like many other investors, sued Teraform and Do Kwon for fraud and for damages before any court anywhere, as many defrauded investors did, individually or in a group, and if he did not do it, why did he not , because he and the Government Public Relations Service did not answer the questions of "Vijesti".
Prime Minister did not report to ASK that he has Luna tokens
Spajić never reported to the Agency for the Prevention of Corruption that he owns luna tokens. In the first and second reports, in December 2020 and March 2021, the then Minister of Finance and Social Welfare reported that he had bitcoins worth 150 thousand euros. In later reports, he reported that he owned the cryptocurrency, but did not specify the value. In April 2023, he reports for the first time that he has BTC (bitcoin), ETH (ethereum), BNB (binance), USDT (tether), and adds "etc". It does not list the value of its crypto assets in those reports. According to data from the ASK website, he gave consent for access to his accounts until the report from August 2023, and has not given it since then.
Neither Spajić nor the Government's Public Relations Service answered the question of "Vijesti" why the prime minister did not state in any application to ASK that he owns luna tokens, while he stated others in some. Also, it was not answered why, after the first application, he stopped stating the value of cryptocurrencies in his possession in his property and income declarations.
A financial expert told "Vijesti" that the answer is in Spajić's crypto wallet.
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