Daniel Shin PortOne, a co-founder of Terraform Labs, was charged in South Korea with regard to the late cryptocurrency Terra and Luna. According to allegations from Bloomberg and the local Yonhap News Agency, Shin was supposedly charged with offences like fraud, carelessness, and embezzlement.
Prosecutors at Seoul Southern District Court also indicted nine additional Terra employees, some of them had jobs in marketing, systems development, and administration, according to Bloomberg. The outlet claims that assets belonging to the accused have been frozen for a total of 246.8 billion won, or around $184.7 million.
In 2018, he and co-founder Do Kwon founded Terraform Labs. In order to (theoretically) maintain Terra’s peg to the dollar, the business later that year developed its Luna cryptocurrency and eventually tied the token to it in 2020. Last year, as Terra started to fall apart, Luna fell with it, costing a huge amount of money.
Kwon was the subject of a lawsuit alleging securities fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as an arrest order issued by the South Korean government. Kwon was finally caught in Montenegro after trying to avoid the police for a few months. There, the authorities in Montenegro claim he is charged with a new crime: using a fake passport to board a flight to Dubai. He is going to stand trial and could perhaps be returned to South Korea or the United States.
Shin’s lawyer, Kim Ki-dong, asserted in a statement provided to Bloomberg that Shin was not involved in the Terra, Luna collapse because he had left the company two years before its demise. After falling, he “voluntarily returned to South Korea and has been faithfully cooperating with the probe for more than 10 months, with the goal of contributing to reality-finding.”
An international legal reaction
The second person to create Terraform, Do Kwon, was arrested in Montenegro in March. After being charged with fraud and conspiracy by US officials, he is currently awaiting extradition to his native South Korea, where he will likely face similar accusations.
Both South Korea and the United States have requested Kwon’s extradition; however, he and Joon must first respond to accusations that they used fraudulent passports while they were being held in that country.
Meanwhile, Kwon has maintained that the allegations made against him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should be abandoned since Terra’s tokens are not securities.
His claims are validated by a ruling by a South Korean court that Terra Classic (LUNC), which is simply LUNA rebranded, is not a security.
Who is Daniel Shin PortOne?
An innovative payment orchestration business in Asia called PortOne was founded and is co-led by Daniel Shin PortOne. The company claims its goal is to support the growth of digital commerce partners in Asia by empowering them.
But prior to that, Shin established TMON, the leading unicorn in Korean e-commerce with a $3.5 billion GMV. In 2017, his role as CEO was renamed as Chairman. Ticket Monster (TMON) was introduced by Daniel Shin PortOne in 2010 and is purportedly one of the largest e-commerce platforms in Korea.
Daniel Shin PortOne has gained a lot of recognition for his business ventures. “Wharton Magazine” named him one of the “40 under 40” Wharton graduates. Shin has been selected the CEO of the year by “Weekly People”. Shin has been selected by the WEF in Switzerland as the 2019 Young Global Leader.
Daniel Shin PortOne is another active angel investor. To date, he has invested in almost forty different enterprises. Team Blind, Vonvon, Tosslab (Jandi), 82 Labs (Morning Recovery), NBT Partners (Cashslide), Tosslab, Marketit, Korea Credit Data, Pomelo Fashion, and Fave are a few of Shin’s most notable investments.
Bottom Line
Originally meant to be a stablecoin backed by the dollar, the value of TerraUSD and its sibling coin Luna was wiped out when they fell. Authorities in South Korea say that Daniel Shin PortOne and other Terraform partners made over $346 million in profits by dumping their cryptocurrency holdings before the crash.
Yonhap reports that Korean authorities assert Daniel Shin PortOne and others were aware that Terra’s price-peg strategy was unfeasible, but they nevertheless tricked investors by manipulating the coin’s value and using misleading advertising.
