Update: Korean authorities have since confirmed that the detained person is Do Kwon.

Montenegro Vice President Filip Adzic confirmed the arrest of an individual traveling to Montenegro, Podgorica — suspected to be Terra fugitive Do Kwon.

A translated statement from the VP read:

“Montenegrin police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs.”

In the tweet, Adzic called Do Kwon one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, adding that the person detained was traveling with false documents.

Awaiting identity confirmation

In February, reports surfaced that Do Kwon was hiding out in Serbia, which borders Montenegro to the north. A delegation that included members of South Korea’s Justice Ministry and Prosecutor’s Office traveled to Serbia in search of the Terra Labs co-founder.

Adzic said they are waiting for official confirmation of the identity of the person detained. Korean authorities have since confirmed that the detained person is Do Kwon, who was arrested with an aid.

“We checked the age, nationality, and name with the identification card the person had, and confirmed that he was the same person as CEO Kwon with photo data.“

@FatManTerra, who worked to shed light on the alleged fraud during the height of the mania, gave a scathing summary of Do Kwon’s actions.

“He shilled a fake ecosystem built on spoofed transactions. He orchestrated a secret bailout and told the people it was the “strength of his algorithm”. And when retail investors committed suicide, he made jokes at their expense.“

Not holding back, he signed off, hoping that the “full force of the law” would descend upon him.

Terra implosion

On May 9, 2022, the UST stablecoin lost its dollar peg price, triggering a massive slide in its balancing asset, Terra LUNA.

As an algorithmic stablecoin, UST maintained its peg by moderating its supply by burning to decrease, or minting to increase, in conjunction with the opposite action occurring for the balancing asset.

Pre-collapse, UST had become the third-largest stablecoin by market cap, earning itself a degree of legitimacy by achieving that. However, following the collapse — which was the first sign all was not well in the cryptosphere — the contagion effect rippled across the industry, triggering liquidity issues elsewhere.

Investigations into the collapse turned up damning allegations on the Terra ecosystem — including deliberate exploits in the Mirror Protocol left for insiders to drain, the use of shell companies to launder money, and Do Kwon siphoning millions of dollars a month from the project.

An estimated $40 billion was lost, and many lives were ruined.

In an October 2022 interview with Laura Shin of the Unchained Podcast, Do Kwon said fraud charges directed at him by South Korean authorities had no legitimacy.

Specifically, Do Kwon said cryptocurrencies, not being classed as securities in the country, fall outside the remit of applicable law, namely the Capital Markets Act.

UBS Group has agreed to purchase the ailing European bank Credit Suisse for $3.2 billion, according to various reports on March 19.

UBS will buy Credit Suisse

Swiss President Alain Berset announced the deal in the evening, according to reports from the Associated Press. The government brokered the deal to prevent a financial crisis.

The value of the deal increased over the day. UBS Group initially offered to buy Credit Suisse for just $1 billion. UBS Group then raised its bid, and although Berset did not initially reveal the size of the deal, many reports placed the deal’s value at $2 billion.

As of 8:00 p.m. UTC, the Associated Press suggests that the deal is worth $3.2 billion. The current report also suggests that the Swiss National Bank will provide $162 billion of liquidity to UBS Group, up from $54 billion as previously announced.

Credit Suisse experienced specific issues leading up to the sale. Though the company has faced scandals for years, new issues arose on March 14, as managers disclosed “material weaknesses” in the bank’s financial reporting controls.

Concerns around Credit Suisse caused its share value to fall rapidly: company stock (CHF) is now valued at $1.86, representing a decline of 32.85% over the past month.

Justin Sun made crypto proposal

Justin Sun, known for his leadership role at Huobi and his former role as CEO of TRON, offered to buy Credit Suisse for $1.5 billion earlier in the day.

Sun wrote in a series of tweets on March 19:

I would like to propose my own offer of $1.5 billion to acquire Credit Suisse and integrate it into the Web3.0 world. Switzerland has been one of the most crypto-friendly countries in the world.

Sun wrote that UBS’s original bid “falls short” and described his own plans to integrate Credit Suisse with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. He noted that Switzerland is among the world’s most crypto-friendly countries in terms of regulation.

It is unclear whether Credit Suisse and the Swiss government considered Sun’s offer.

Fortune suggests that the country considered nationalization the only possible alternative to the UBS deal, which implies that Sun’s offer was not seriously considered.

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Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.