The storm said that the American government pursues him not for actual criminal actions, but for writing an open source. The US authorities are charged with the Tornado Cash developer with the aim of laundering money and violation of the sanctions law, since, according to law enforcement officers, more than $ 1 billion was washed through the cryptomixer. The funds that were illegally received by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus.
The storm denies the assistance of criminal activity. According to him, Tornado Cash was created to protect user confidentiality – the cryptomyxer worked autonomously and was not controlled by anyone. The developer added that he did not contact any attackers, criminal organizations and North Korean hackers. If the cryptomixer was used for illegal purposes, the developers could not stop it.
“When Tornado Cash became completely decentralized and not requiring confidence, it was not particularly activity at that time. We thought that he would become another project that would remain on the landfill. Programmist engineers have many similar projects. We were not going to create it for criminals. The idea and goal was to simply write a code, and not to conduct business, to charge a fee or to receive income. We were not going to have customers. That’s all, ”said Roman Storm.
In August 2023, the storm was detained by American law enforcement officers, but was later released on bail. The developer said that now he is cut off from the financial system, living without bank accounts and access to cryptocurrencies. As the storm put it, it is punished already before they prove guilt. Consideration of criminal charges of storm should be held on July 14 in the court of the Southern District of New York.
The storm warned that if the court found him guilty, the conviction could harm all developers creating open source code. This will create a dangerous precedent, and the Defi sector can “die”, a storm fears.
Recently, the Tornado Cash developer support fund received a donation from a hacker who stole $ 12 million with a decentralized Cork Protocol platform. Earlier, the non -profit organization Ethereum Foundation transferred $ 500,000 to the legal protection of the storm.
Source: Bits
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