Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev to Remain in Jail Until at Least Late February: Held Without Charges Since August
He has been held in detention since August, days after the U.S. Treasury used sanction powers against the Tornado protocol.
- Tornado Cash is an Ethereum privacy tool.
- Alexey Perstev has been ordered to stay in jail until Feb. 20 after a Netherlands court found the Tornado Cash developer represented a flight risk.
- He has been held in detention since August, days after the U.S. Treasury used sanction powers against the Tornado protocol.
- The hearing saw the Dutch public prosecutor announce money laundering charges for the first time. The prosecutor had said little more about the case than a press release, but now accused Pertsev of facilitating the processing of dirty money by writing the Tornado Cash code.
- The Dutch public prosecutor brushed aside arguments that Tornado Cash was a decentralized protocol which Pertsev was powerless to control, claiming that it was in fact one and the same as PepperSec, a company for which Pertsev worked alongside fellow developers Roman Semenov and Roman Storm.
Just made it back from the pro forma hearing on the necessity of continuing the pre-trial detention of Tornado Cash developer Alexy Pertsev.
— Aaron van Wirdum (@AaronvanW) November 22, 2022
This wasn't the actual court case yet, but the public prosecutor did offer slightly more insights on why he was indicted, exactly.
