Singapore Charges Ex-Hodlnaut CEO Zhu Juntao With 6 Fraud Counts

Singapore prosecutors charged former Hodlnaut CEO Zhu Juntao on Tuesday with six counts of fraud by false representation, accusing him of directing staff to publish false statements on the firm's Telegram channels and in customer emails claiming Hodlnaut had no direct exposure to the May 2022 collapse of TerraUSD. The Singapore Police Force announcement alleges the same misrepresentations were repeated in three posts on Zhu's personal X account in June 2022. Zhu disputed all six charges in court and was given a pre-trial conference date in June 2026. Each count carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison, fines, or both under Singapore law.

Why it matters

Court-appointed judicial managers later estimated Hodlnaut lost roughly $189.7 million from its Terra exposure, after the firm had channeled about $317 million of user funds into Terra's Anchor Protocol — which was offering around 19.5% annualized yield on UST deposits in the run-up to the collapse. Restructuring reports also flagged poor internal recordkeeping and incomplete cooperation from some executives, both of which are likely to feature in the prosecution's case. The charges turn what had been a civil liquidation fight into a criminal exposure for a top Asian crypto lender's former chief, more than three and a half years after withdrawals were frozen in August 2022.

Market impact

Hodlnaut is one of several crypto lenders that failed in the wake of Terraform Labs' algorithmic stablecoin implosion, an event that erased roughly $40 billion from the crypto market and contributed to failures at Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and Voyager. The Singapore case lands alongside ongoing US and Korean proceedings against former Terraform Labs executives and is the most direct criminal action yet against a lender-side principal. The read for the industry: post-collapse misrepresentations about stablecoin or yield-protocol exposure are now prosecutable as fraud in a major Asian hub, with penalties that scale to life-altering prison time per count. Watch the June 2026 pre-trial conference for the next procedural beat and any plea developments.