During a telephone conference on September 26, District Judge Katherine Polk Failla denied Roman Storm’s motion to dismiss the charges brought against him by the US Department of Justice. Amanda Tuminelli, general counsel of the DeFi Education Fund, spoke about this.
Storm argued that because of the First Amendment, which prohibits government from restricting freedom of speech and the press, he was free to participate in the development of the Tornado Cash software.
However, the judge said the code’s “functionality” was not speech covered by the First Amendment. The federal government’s efforts to combat money laundering and sanctions violations have nothing to do with suppressing free speech, Failla said. She added that Tornado Cash is “significantly different” from other financial services or money transfer companies.
“Judge Failla’s ruling denying Storm’s motion is an attack on the freedom of software developers everywhere. This will go down in history as a perversion of the law and a travesty of justice,” wrote Variant Fund General Counsel Jake Chervinsky.
In August 2023, federal prosecutors charged Storm with “knowingly facilitating” the laundering of more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds through a cryptomixer. The Ministry of Finance also added another co-founder of Tornado Cash, Roman Semenov, to the sanctions list. US authorities accused Semyonov and Storm of conspiracy to commit money laundering, as well as violating sanctions and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The maximum penalty for each of these counts is up to 20 years in prison. Storm and Semenov are also accused of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. The maximum penalty for this charge is five years in prison.
The trial of Roman Storm is scheduled to begin on December 2 in New York and will last two weeks. Meanwhile, Russian citizen Roman Semenov remains at large.
In April, the chief lawyer of the American crypto exchange Coinbase, Paul Grewal, called on the Treasury to lift sanctions against the cryptomixer Tornado Cash, as they violate the rights of Americans to privacy.
Source: Bits
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