South Korea’s e-commerce group TMON’s former CEO (Mr. A) is reportedly facing an arrest warrant request from Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office’s financial and securities crime joint investigation team (Seoul prosecutors). The said arrest warrant request against Mr. A is reportedly pending approval by the Seoul court.
Mr. A is reported to have allegedly received bribes worth billions of won in LUNA from Terraform Labs’ co-founder Shin Hyun-seong. Mr. A reportedly promoted Terra on TMON deceitfully citing that it enables “secure payments like cash.”
Danny Kunwoong Park, Staff Writer, Forkast News, states that per his findings, the former TMON CEO is not arrested yet. Park confirmed his findings with the Seoul southern district prosecutors office that an arrest warrant against Mr. A is sought.
Danny Park tweeted:
Seoul prosecutors requested an arrest warrant on the former CEO of ecommerce giant Tmon for allegedly receiving bribery from Terra cofounder Daniel Shin in exchange for promoting Terra as a payment method, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors Office confirmed with me via text.
— Danny Kunwoong Park (@ParkKunwoong) February 15, 2023
Providing further clarification on the developing news, Park stated via a tweet that per the report, the Seoul court would decide on the matter on Friday.
The accused reportedly received billions of won as back money to introduce ‘Terra’ on TMON as a means of payment with hypothetically ‘claimed’ security. Allegedly, Mr. A has a binding arrest warrant review forthcoming on February 17.
Park went on to confirm that Mr. A had allegedly received LUNA tokens from Shin, the then chairman of the TMON board. He says, per local reports, Mr. A cashed out LUNA and earned billions of won (equalling at least US$770,000 today).
Park tweeted:
The former CEO allegedly received LUNA tokens from Shin, who was also the chairman of the board at Tmon at the time. Local reports say he cashed out LUNA and earned billions of won (at least US$770,000 in todays exchange rate)
— Danny Kunwoong Park (@ParkKunwoong) February 15, 2023
As per prosecutors’ statements, TMON incessantly promoted Terra’s potential as a payment measure (like cash) for e-commerce to skyrocket its price and value. All of this happened even while Terraform Labs was getting warnings from local regulators to stop the said conduct.
Financial authorities have reported to have warned Shin in advance that ‘it is impossible to conduct a payment business with cryptocurrency,’ from the very start
Shin reportedly went on to announce at the Jeju International Convention Center in September 2018 that ‘Terra’ can be used by large commercial (TMON and Baedal Minjok). He reportedly said, “Payment with ‘Terra,’ and not with a credit card, would get customers a 10%-20% discount.
