Authorities Reveal Name Of Swiss Bank Where Do Kwon Allegedly Stored $100M After Converting 10K BTC

South Korean authorities have revealed that the Swiss bank believed to have stored Do Kwon's $100 million is Sygnum Bank AG, which is the world's first digital asset-regulated bank based in Zurich, Switzerland.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed in February that Kwon, the co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, the blockchain firm behind the crashed algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and the crypto asset LUNA, and his crypto company, converted thousands of Bitcoin into millions of U.S. dollars and moved the funds to a bank in Switzerland.

Although the U.S. financial regulator did not reveal the name of the bank, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office's Financial Securities Crime Joint Investigation Division revealed in a press conference that the funds in question, amounting to $100 million, were transferred to Sygnum accounts, a local news outlet reported Tuesday.

"We have also confirmed that $100 million has been used in several places, not left in the Sygnum account as it is, and some transfers have been made to the Kim & Chang law firm account (at the attorney's expense) and the remaining amount is about billions of won," the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office claimed, according to the outlet.

Sygnum has not yet released any official statement on the issue, but Finews Asia claimed that the Swiss Bank only acted based on an official court order, citing "other sources close to the situation" as the source of information.

Court filings showed in February that the SEC accused Kwon of transferring more than 10,000 Bitcoin from Terraform Labs and Luna Foundation Guard and then converting some of these tokens into cash through a Swiss bank account following the business' collapse in May 2022.

The financial watchdog said the 10,000 Bitcoin, which reportedly came from the crypto asset platform accounts of Terraform Labs and Luna Foundation Guard, were moved into a cold or unhosted wallet.

A cold or unhosted wallet is used to keep crypto assets outside of the exchange's custody.

"On a periodic basis since May 2022, Terraform and Kwon have transferred — and continue to transfer — [b]itcoin from this wallet to a financial institution based in Switzerland and have converted the [b]itcoin to cash," court filings indicated.

Last week, Kwon and his legal team filed a petition and asked the U.S. court to dismiss the charges filed by the SEC against the CEO on several grounds, including lack of jurisdiction because the tokens and projects of the blockchain firm did not specifically target U.S. investors since they were "aimed at the world."