The investigation surrounding HYBE founder Bang Si Hyuk has just taken a far more serious and unsettling turn. What had already been shaping into a major financial scandal is now widening into something bigger, with Korean police reportedly trying to track down a senior former HYBE executive who has been out of reach for months. According to Koreaboo, citing a new KBS report, authorities are now pursuing that executive in connection with Bang’s alleged financial fraud case.

The report says the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s Financial Crime Investigation Unit announced on April 21 that it had applied for an arrest warrant for Bang on charges tied to fraudulent and unfair trading. But the story did not stop with the warrant itself. KBS’s coverage reportedly dug into whether Bang could actually face arrest, and in doing so, raised fresh concerns about possible evidence destruction connected to the wider investigation.

That is where the case starts to feel even more troubling.

According to the article, KBS claimed Bang Si Hyuk replaced both of his mobile phones shortly before the police investigation began. On its own, that detail is alarming enough. But the report says there was another change that may have had even broader consequences: HYBE allegedly switched its internal messaging system in October 2020, right after its IPO. If true, that move has now left police unable to verify conversation records that may have been exchanged through the company messenger between Bang and his associates regarding the IPO process. In a case already clouded by suspicion, that missing trail of communication only deepens the sense that key answers may now be much harder to recover.

Then the investigation turns outward.

A central figure in the case, former HYBE CIO Kim Joong Dong, is described in the report as having been on the run for months. Koreaboo says KBS reported that police have requested an Interpol Red Notice for him, a step that would allow authorities to seek his arrest wherever he may be in the world. That move alone signals just how significant investigators believe his role may be. This is no longer being treated like a side issue or a minor loose end. It is being framed as a global effort to locate someone who could be deeply tied to the core of the alleged scheme.

Kim’s background only makes the situation look more explosive. The article says he served as an outside director from 2011 to 2019, helped attract early investors, and played a leading role in the creation of the private equity fund Eastone PE, which is reportedly suspected of being central to the alleged financial crimes. In other words, this is not a peripheral name suddenly dragged into the spotlight. He is being portrayed as someone who stood close to the foundations of the financial structure now under scrutiny.

What makes the story even harsher is the suggestion that Kim did not simply disappear recently in a moment of panic. According to the report, he abruptly left Korea in June and has reportedly been living in the United States since then. The article also says he has not responded to any summons sent by Korean police. That silence has only intensified the suspicion surrounding him, especially as the investigation grows more aggressive.

The most damaging claim of all may be how police allegedly view his place in the bigger picture. Koreaboo states that Kim Joong Dong is suspected of being the “mastermind” behind Bang Si Hyuk’s alleged fraudulent trading. That word changes the entire mood of the story. If accurate, then this is not merely a case of one executive vanishing while authorities ask questions. It is a case where investigators may believe the person now being hunted internationally was one of the main architects behind the scandal itself.

So what began as a financial investigation into one of K-pop’s most powerful figures is now expanding into something far more ominous: arrest warrants, missing records, switched devices, a vanished executive, and an Interpol request that suggests the chase has moved beyond Korea’s borders. The scandal around Bang Si Hyuk was already serious. But with police now reportedly seeking a Red Notice for a former top HYBE executive, the case no longer feels like a corporate controversy. It feels like a widening manhunt at the center of one of the industry’s most dangerous crises.