The hearing against cryptomixer Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm will begin on December 2 in New York after a judge rejected his motion to dismiss the case.
In the US v. Storm (Tornado Cash) hearing just now, the court rejected the arguments in Storm’s motion to dismiss as a matter of law and heavily punted what she said were factual issues for trial (“To the extent Storm is asking me to decide a controverted issue of fact, I am not… https://t.co/enpBby3Gue
— Amanda Tuminelli (@amandatums) September 26, 2024
According to DeFi Education Fund chief legal officer Amanda Tuminelli, during a conference call on September 26, Southern District of New York Judge Katherine Polk Failla found the defense’s arguments insufficient to dismiss the criminal prosecution.
In July, Storm’s lawyers asked for the trial to be delayed, citing “complex legal and factual issues” and “millions of pages of documents.”
The judge did not accept the Tornado Cash co-founder’s new free speech arguments. He argued that the First Amendment of the US Constitution protected his rights as a software developer.
However, according to Failla, the “functionality” of the code is not covered by the amendment.
She also added that the federal government’s efforts to combat money laundering and sanctions evasion are “completely unrelated” to suppressing free speech.
However, Failla believes that Tornado Cash is “significantly different” from other financial services or money transfer companies, writes CoinDesk.
Variant Fund Chief Legal Officer Jake Czerwinski called the motion’s denial an “attack on the freedom of software developers everywhere.”
In August 2022 OFAC added the website Tornado Cash to the sanctions list, with the help of which, according to the department, the attackers laundered cryptocurrency worth more than $7 billion. Over $455 million of them are associated with the activities of the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group.
In the same month, Dutch law enforcement officers arrested the developer of the mixer, Alexey Pertsev.
On May 14, 2024, he was found guilty of laundering $1.2 billion through Tornado Cash and sentenced to 64 months in prison. In July, the court denied Pertsev bail pending an appeal of the decision.
Charges of money laundering and violation of sanctions in the United States have also been brought against Storm and another co-founder of the mixer, Roman Semenov.
Let us remind you that the first one was released on bail; he refused to admit his guilt. Semyonov remained free, but was subject to sanctions.
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Source: Cryptocurrency
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