Sanctions

Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm has petitioned a judge to drop the criminal charges against him after an appeals court found the Treasury unlawfully sanctioned the crypto mixer.

Roman Storm, the co-founder of crypto mixing platform Tornado Cash, has told a United States federal judge that his criminal charges should be dropped after an appeals court found sanctions against the platform’s smart contracts were unlawful.

Storm said in a Dec. 18 motion in a Manhattan district court that an opinion last month from the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court on a separate case finding the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) exceeded its authority in sanctioning Tornado Cash’s smart contracts “makes clear that all three counts of the indictment are fatally and legally flawed.”

He argued the opinion “most obviously impacts” his charge of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a law central to the US sanctions apparatus, as the appeals court found the smart contracts “are not the ‘property’ of a foreign national or entity” meaning they “cannot be blocked” under the law.

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