New York, New York – The Office of the Foreign Assets Department of the US Treasury (OFAC) The sanctions against the Tornado Cash confidentiality tool cannot be discussed during the next trial of the Roman Storm developer, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
At a state conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, district judge Katherine Polk Failla initially renounced whether she would authorize expert witnesses to testify on the sanctions, which were initially imposed in August 2022, eliminated this March and which then found illegal by a Texas court.
After hearing the arguments of the accusation and the defense, Failla decided to grant Storm’s request in the moving of Limin to fully ban the testimony of the sanctions, arguing that it would simply be too confused for a jury to do what it described as “mental gymnastics” of understanding the reasons why the sanctions were imposed and ultimately deleted.
“I will prevent references to the sanctions of the OFAC of August 2022,” said Failla, with the warning that she left the possibility of a “unicorn document” – a key evidence of the prosecution which articulated on the alleged driving of Storm after the sanctions, which could change mind before the start of the trial. Failla gave prosecutors until Wednesday to submit such proof. The judge had ruled on Tuesday that the parties would not be authorized to discuss the van Loon c affair. Treasury Department, which finally led the sanctions to be abandoned.
The rest of the storm movements in the limin (A type of preliminary request to exclude certain evidence or arguments to be authorized during the trial) Were rejected, in particular a motion to prevent references to the hacking group punishable by the State of North Korea, the Lazare group, and a motion to prevent the “inflammatory characterizations” of sales torn by Storm. Earlier in the day, the prosecutors said they planned to introduce evidence demonstrating that Storm was generously benefited from his involvement in tornado cash, including buying several houses and selling $ 12 million dollars of torn tokens after the OFAC sanctioned tornado money.
Prosecutors said they did not plan to assert the trial that Storm had violated the bank’s secrecy law (BSA) By not implementing a customer protocol / an anti-flashing protocol for the torade, to express through their expert testimony that he could have and choose not to do it.
Failla has also decided to allow the government to produce evidence of the Tornado Cash phone from the Tornado of Storm, Alexev. The Dutch government has authorized an American federal office (FBI) Agent to see a report on the content of the Pertsev phone, from which the agent has made his own relation to selected information. The defense of Storm tried to ensure that the evidence of the Pétèsev phone launched, arguing that the report was selected in the icing and impossible to authenticate, but the judge came back on the accusation side, judging that the report was eligible.
After a lot of back and forth between the parties on their respective expert witnesses, Failla judged that all the witnesses could testify, although she put railings on certain witnesses of the two parties.
It is not yet clear if Storm will testify in his own defense, although Failla said on Tuesday that he will take the position, he will not be allowed to affirm that he had protections of the first amendment in his work with Tornado Cash.
Failla said that Storm was free to discuss his belief in privacy rights, but said: “I do not think that freedom of expression or the rights of the first amendment should arise in this trial.”
Friday, a final conference of pre-process will be held by phone at 3 p.m. he. The Storm trial is expected to start on June 14 and should take place for four weeks.
