Indictment of Tornado Cash Developers Fails to Display Clear Law Infringement

A crypto advocacy group named Coin Center has condemned the new indictment of a couple of former developers of Tornado Cash. The platform argued that the indictment’s facts do not offer any unambiguous infringement of offenses dealing with money transfers.

The United States Office of Foreign Asset Control carried out the indictment of Roman Semenov and Roman Strom on the 23rd of August.

Coin Center Says Tornado Cash Developers’ Indictment Remains Ineffective in Highlighting Clear Law Violation

The focus of the indictment concerns the conspiracy to run an unregistered money-transferring business along with some other allegations. Peter Van Valkenburgh, the research director at Coin Center also argued in this respect. He asserted that the claims of the indictment seemingly oppose the instructions that the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network offered.

New Tornado Cash indictments seem to run counter to FinCEN guidance

Coin Center’s initial thoughts on a case that could potentially criminalize the publication of software codehttps://t.co/YCBv3vsZAE

— Neeraj K Agrawal (@NeerajKA) August 23, 2023

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In addition to this, he argued that Tornado Cash just offers the software for the transmission of funds instead of the transaction of money. One of the claims in the indictment deals with the unregistered money transmission by defendants Valkenburgh noted. It said that they got involved with the business related to the transaction of funds with registration with FinCEN.

The Executive of Coin Center Condemns the Indictment

He discussed FinCEN’s interpretation of the constituents of the services concerning money transmission under the Bank Secrecy Act. It points out that the entity offering anonymizing software does not act as a money transmitter. Following that, Valkenburgh cited another excerpt saying that just people utilizing the software offer money transmission-related services.

Valkenburgh acknowledged that Tornado Cash offered convenience to individuals in using the smart contracts of the protocol to transact money. He added that this does not signify that the developers could carry out money transmission. He condemned assertions in the indictment, stating that Semenov and Storm had full control over the smart contracts of the protocol.