Court detains Tornado Cash developer

In the Netherlands, a judge has kept Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev under arrest and set a 90-day period within which the first hearing must take place. CoinDesk reports, citing a court spokesperson.

The hearing was held on August 24 in private. Pertsev’s lawyers were unable to secure his release on bail. According to the publication, the developer has not yet been formally charged.

On August 8, OFAC added the Tornado Cash site, as well as 39 Ethereum addresses and 6 USDC addresses linked to it, to the sanctions list.

According to the agency, since the mixer’s creation in 2019, it has been used to launder cryptocurrency worth more than $7 billion. Elliptic puts it at about $1.54 billion.

On August 12, Dutch authorities arrested an unnamed man on suspicion of involvement in laundering funds and concealing illicit financial flows through a cryptocurrency mixer. It later emerged that the man was Pertsev.

On August 22 in Amsterdam, a rally in support of him took place. Participants said that open-source code is not a crime, and authorities should pursue the real perpetrators.

As a reminder, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell described sanctions against Tornado Cash unconstitutional, while TRM Labs analysts a challenge to compliance

Criticism was also voiced by US Representative Tom Emmer. In his view, the restrictions on the mixer threaten privacy and innovation. He called on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to explain OFAC’s actions.

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