Pertsev is working on his appeal after a Dutch court convicted him of money laundering in May 2024, resulting in a sentence of five years and four months.
Summary
Alexey Pertsev, the developer of Tornado Cash, has been released from prison in the Netherlands after a Dutch court suspended his pretrial detention in exchange for electronic monitoring. Pertsev, a Russian national and Dutch resident, was convicted of money laundering in May 2024 and sentenced to five years and four months in prison. The US has charged Storm and Semenov with facilitating the laundering of over $1 billion in cryptocurrency through Tornado Cash.
Alexey Pertsev, the developer of Tornado Cash, is scheduled to be released from prison after a Dutch court suspended his “pretrial detention” in anticipation of his appeal against his money laundering conviction.
In a statement to X on February 6, Pertsev stated that his release from prison would not be considered “true liberation” because he would still be subject to electronic monitoring.
A Dutch court has suspended my pretrial detention in exchange for electronic monitoring. He stated, “This will provide me with the opportunity to further develop my appeal and advocate for justice.”
9 a.m. UTC or 10 a.m. local time is the scheduled release date for Pertsev on February 7. Detention in the Netherlands has been in effect since August 2022 for Pertsev.
During his trial, Pertsev contended that he could not be held accountable for the actions of those who employed the Tornado Cash protocol for unlawful or illegal reasons.
The court rejected this, asserting that Pertsev and the other co-founders of Tornado Cash should have implemented more stringent measures to prevent criminal use.
Pertsev’s appeal
On May 14, a Dutch court deemed Pertsev, a Russian national and resident of the Netherlands, guilty of money laundering. He was subsequently sentenced to five years and four months in prison.
The attorneys representing Pertsev promptly filed an appeal, and he has been in pre-trial detention ever since. In July, he was denied probation once more, following his previous rejections of bail on two separate occasions.
In August 2023, the United States charged Roman Storm and his fellow co-founder Roman Semenov with the alleged criminal activity of facilitating the laundering of more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency through Tornado Cash. Semenov remains on the FBI’s most sought list and remains at large.
It is anticipated that Storm will be tried in April and is currently free on a $2 million bond. The detention of the two proprietors was the result of the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioning Tornado Cash in August 2022. A US court reversed the sanctions on January 21.
Storm claimed in a post on X on January 22, that he was being “prosecuted for writing open-source code that enables private crypto transactions in a wholly non-custodial manner.”.
Tornado Cash is a non-custodial crypto mixing protocol, which implies that it does not retain or manage the funds. For many, the prosecution of the platform’s developers has far-reaching implications for software development and cryptocurrency.
Storm contended that his prosecution is a “terrifying criminalization of privacy” that poses a threat to “criminalize software development itself.”
“This case has already had a debilitating effect on developers who work on software tools,” he stated.
Michael Lewellen, a crypto developer, filed a complaint against the US Department of Justice on January 16. He claimed that the department’s interpretation of money-transmitting laws in the Tornado Cash case put him at risk of facing charges if he released his software.
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