Tornado trees are officially protected from American sanctions, following a district decision on Monday.
The Treasury Foreign Active Control Office (OFAC) withdrew the tornado cash from its list of sanctions in March, several months after a court of appeal ruled that the agency had “highlighted its authority defined by the congress” by sanctioning the intelligent contracts of the cryptographic mixing service in 2022.
However, the way in which the OFAC tabled the Tornado in cash, and the opinions and required that its lawyers deposited with the Court in March, left an apparent room for maneuver for the agency to put the mixing service on its non-theft list in the future, said a federal judge. The Treasury lawyers argued that because the OFAC had revoked sanctions against the tornado treasury before the final judgment of the district court (but after the decisive decision of the Court of Appeal), the question was theoretical.
But, to the six complainants in Van Loon vs Treasury – All users of Tornado Cash – The problem was actually not without object. In a file of April 21, their lawyers launched OFAC’s response to the decision of the fifth circuit, calling him “a study in chaos” and accusing them of “wav[ing] The flag of moments “in a last effort to” escape an unfavorable judgment “.
“Enough, that’s enough,” said lawyer’s lawyers to the judge. “It is time for this court to do what the fifth circuit ordered months ago … The designation of the defendants must be maintained illegal and canceled.”
In his severe decision, the American district judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas said that the case was not theoretical, and was rekindled with the complainants, judging that the designation of Tornado Cash by OFAC was illegal and that the agency is therefore permanent by prohibiting to apply sanctions against this.
“”[OFAC does] Do not suggest that they will no longer sanction tornado money, and they can try to “reconstruct the same thing precisely [designation] In the future ‘, “wrote Pitman.” Rather than recognizing that the order of the fifth circuit forced to delimit the arbor in cash, the defendants declare that they have exercised their “discretionary power” by deciding to do so according to more general policy and legal considerations. »»
The United States Ministry of Justice (DoJ) is currently pursuing criminal charges against two Torada cash developers, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, which was charged in 2023 in conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to exploit a silver issuer without license and to plot to violate American sanctions. Semenov remains on the list of SOFAC sanctions.
Earlier this month, the US sub-procurer Todd Blanche sent MJ staff a memo informing them to reduce the priorities related to the application linked to cryptography. The staff were invited to no longer pursue cases against the exchanges of cryptography, the mixture of services or offline wallets “for the acts of their end users or the involuntary violations of the regulations”. Blanche ordered to delete any current survey which did not comply with these new priorities, and said that his office would work with the MJ criminal division to decide how to proceed to any current dispute that did not meet new application standards.
Memo has already made waves in current cryptography disputes. The prosecutors in the case against the two founders of Crypto Mixer Samurai Wallet Wallet submitted a joint request to the defense lawyers on Monday, requesting an extension of 16 days as soon as they decided to drop charges under the auspices of the memory of Blanche.
A multitude of eminent personalities from the cryptography industry also signed a letter from the education fund to the White House and the Crispo David Sacks on Monday, urging US President Donald Trump to intervene in the case to “Interrupt the Software Campaign of the Age of Justice at the Biden era storm.
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