The First Court Hearing For Terra Co-Founder Held In South Korea

Terraform Labs’ trouble continues as the Seoul Southern District Court on Monday conducted the first hearing for Daniel Shin and seven other employees of the company. Shin, who was indicted in April by South Korea on violations of capital-markets law, among other charges, skipped the hearing. His legal team requested additional trial preparation time.

Legal Proceedings For Daniel Shin Begin In Seoul

A trial preparation hearing for Terraform co-founder Daniel Shin kicked off in a Seoul Southern District Court.

According to a report from local news outlet News1 Korea on July 10, the Seoul court held the preliminary hearing for Shin and seven of his alleged accomplices. However, the former Terra exec reportedly did not personally show up for the hearing. His attorneys argued that this case is more technical and asked for extra time. Judge Jang Seong-hoon approved the request and set August 28 as the second trial date.

Shin and the seven others were indicted without detention on April 25 by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutor’s Office for myriad charges, including illegal trading. At the time, prosecutors said the entire Terra project was “fictitious” and bound to fail.

Prosecutors have alleged that Shin and his accomplices misled investors and manipulated the price of some tokens via media coverage and transactions beginning in 2018. They reportedly accrued “unfair profits” of around 462.9 billion won (over $350 million). Shin’s attorneys denied all the allegations in April. Nonetheless, the authorities said at the time that they had already frozen 246.8 billion won ($184.7 million) in assets from the people indicted. 

Shin co-founded Terraform Labs with Do Kwon back in 2018. His legal team has previously asserted that he left the company in 2020, prior to the spectacular May 2022 implosion of the Terra ecosystem. Per his LinkedIn profile, Shin then went on to launch payments firm PortOne Global. 

Global Legal Fallout

The catastrophic meltdown of Terra caused by its algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD (UST) dropping from its peg with the U.S. dollar sent shockwaves throughout the crypto markets, triggering a series of high-profile bankruptcy cases.

Legal fallout from the multi-billion-dollar Terra cataclysm now spans multiple countries following the detention of Do Kwon and chief financial officer Han Chang Joon in Montenegro in March.

Both the United States and his native South Korea are pushing for Kwon’s extradition, but he and Joon must first face charges of using forged travel documents in Montenegro. As ZyCrypto reported last month, Kwon was sentenced to four months in prison in the Balkan nation.

Meanwhile, the cornered crypto founder has moved to dismiss charges brought against him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), on the basis that Terra-linked tokens don’t qualify as securities.

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