finance
Singapore Charges Former Hodlnaut CEO With Six Fraud Counts
Singapore authorities charged former Hodlnaut CEO Zhu Juntao with six counts of fraud by false representation. Prosecutors allege he directed staff to issue misleading statements about the firm’s exposure to the TerraUSD collapse in 2022.
May 27, 7:51 AM·1m read1 source
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Singapore police charged former Hodlnaut CEO Zhu Juntao with six counts of fraud by false representation on Tuesday. Prosecutors allege he directed employees to publish statements on Telegram channels and in customer emails claiming the company had no direct exposure to the TerraUSD collapse and had not suffered losses.
Authorities also alleged Zhu repeated similar statements in three posts on his personal X account in June 2022. Hodlnaut had channeled roughly $317 million of customer funds into Terra’s Anchor Protocol before the May 2022 collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem.
7 million from its Terra exposure. The company froze customer withdrawals in August 2022 and later entered judicial management before being ordered into liquidation by the Singapore High Court. Hodlnaut, founded in 2019, offered yield-bearing crypto accounts and served more than 30,000 users globally.
Reports reviewed during restructuring proceedings cited poor internal recordkeeping and incomplete cooperation by some executives with investigators. If convicted, Zhu faces up to 20 years in prison, fines, or both on each charge under Singapore law.
He disputed all six charges in court and received a pre-trial conference date in June 2026.
