A Dutch court has decided to keep Aleksey Pertsev, accused of facilitating money laundering through the Tornado Cash app, in jail for at least another 90 days.
At closed hearings held in the city of Den Bosch (Den Bosch), Pertsev’s lawyers sought the release of the client from custody by posting a bail. The lawyer’s request was rejected, and the court decided to keep the developer of the Tornado Cash application in a pre-trial detention cell.
Although Pertsev has not yet been formally charged with any crime, the court has restricted the developer’s freedom for 90 days, during which an initial public hearing must take place.
The crypto community, reacting to the ongoing events around Tornado Cash, was divided in assessing the actions of law enforcement agencies. This concerns not the personality of the cryptomixer developer, but the very fact of repression against open source software producers.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson agrees that arresting developers just for writing open source code is unfair.
However, this does not mean that those who disagree with the actions of the Dutch police are ready to hold an action of disobedience or go to a confrontation. In one way or another, small and large cryptocurrency companies are ready to heed the orders of law enforcement agencies and take legal measures to counteract financial crimes.
USDC stablecoin issuer Circle has suspended 82 accounts associated with the Tornado Cash mixing service following the US Treasury Department’s blacklisting of the service. Because of this, the capitalization of the second largest stablecoin on the planet decreased by $1.6 billion, as investors massively began to transfer their assets from USDC to USDT.
Instead of following the lead of a competitor and distancing itself from Tornado Cash, Tether told the crypto community that the company has almost daily contact with key law enforcement officials and has not been asked to freeze any assets. However, according to Dune Analytics, Tether blocked 709 addresses associated with the mixing service, totaling more than $407.5 million
In June, the Dutch Financial Police Department (FIOD) responsible for economic crimes (Financial Advanced Cyber ​​Team, FACT) launched an investigation into Tornado Cash. FACT suspects that the service was regularly used by criminal groups, including those associated with North Korea. The police department claims that the decentralized service condoned the commission of criminal acts, as it provided absolutely no verification of the legality of the origin of funds.
Source: Bits
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