AMID AN ONGOING INVESTIGATION, PROSECUTORS HAVE BARRED TERRAFORM LABS’ EMPLOYEES FROM LEAVING SOUTH KOREA
The ongoing crypto crash has brought a lot of investors back down to earth. In the case of current and former Terraform Labs employees, it’s keeping them literally grounded.
Dozens of past and present staff from the company behind two notorious crypto coins, terraUSD and Luna, have been barred from leaving South Korea, according to multiple reports. The travel ban comes amid an intensifying investigation into the sudden collapse of terraUSD, a so-called “stablecoin” algorithmically pegged to the value of the US dollar. It turned out not so stable.
Some of the first hints of the travel ban emerged on Twitter, where Daniel Hong, a former Terraform Labs employee posted that he hadn’t been allowed to board a scheduled flight to New York City. Korean outlet JTBC reported the same day that another person, one of the primary designers, behind terraUSD was under a travel ban.
Then, on Tuesday, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office confirmed a travel ban was in effect for tens of current and former Terraform workers, according to a report from the Financial Times. Bloomberg likewise reported that “officials linked to the stablecoin’s collapse” were barred from air travel, citing an official with the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor’s office did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
