Embastilled – Dutch police arrested Tornado Cash developer Alexsey Pertsev in August this year after the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) pointed to the cryptocurrency mixer . The developer continues to be under pressure from the judicial machine.
No ‘Free from Prison’ card for Alexsey Pertsev
Alexsey Pertsev will spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve behind bars. During the hearing on November 22, the court ordered the extension of detention from the developer of Tornado Cash, which is believed to be a leak risk.
However, Alexsey Pertsev had indicated that he was ” ready to accept all restrictions relating to his release, indicating that he wanted to just being able to go to church ” with his wife.
The court was apparently insensitive to his arguments, and the developer of Tornado Cash will remain in prison at least until February 20, 2023, when the next session is held.
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Tornado Cash and money laundering: the indictment
The hearing was also the occasion for the Dutch public prosecutor, Martine Boerlage, to evoke for the first time, money laundering charges against Alexsey Pertsev.
The suit had in effect argued that Tornado Cash was a companynot a decentralized protocol that the developer could not control.
She also defended her position based on laws that prohibit conceal origin and movement funds, an operation that a mixing service like Tornado Cash does for you “.
Martine Boerlage even goes so far as to use the Bridge Ronin hack, to support his arguments. The hackers deposited funds in Tornado Cash, a deposit the prosecutor compared to that of a stack of 100 euro notes at a bank, which would accept this operation without asking questions.
Martine Boerlage did not fail to talk about the discussions between Alexsey Pertsev and fellow developers Roman Semenov and Roman Storm, on Twitter.
The private discussions would have proven that the three men were indeed making operational decisions about how the protocol would work, and that they would have exchanged on ” the way to circumvent money laundering standards “. They would also have admitted that they were involved in ” shady stuff in their discussions.
Alexsey Pertsev’s lawyer and the developer’s supporters are struggling to make their voices heard. The lawsuit persists in denying the decentralized nature of the protocol, and the court prefers to keep the developer of Tornado Cash behind bars.
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