DeFi Education Fund stated that it is still waiting to see the charges against the developer.
Dutch officials informed the DeFi Education Fund that it could be criminal for a developer to write code solely for the purpose of committing crimes.
This is the latest information from the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, (FIOD), who last week arrested a Dutch developer aged 29 in connection to Tornado Cash.
The Block reported the arrest of Alexey Pertsev (a Tornado Cash developer).
“About the concerns. The development of a program is allowed. However, if a program was created solely for criminal acts (e.g. to hide criminal flows of funds), then putting online/making accessible a developed program may be illegal,” FIOD stated in a response to DeFi Education Fund questions.
Since last week, the non-profit has been communicating with FIOD and sharing on Twitter.
Tornado Cash was developed to hide Ethereum transactions. This app has been used by traders who wish to keep their privacy, but it has also been scrutinized by government officials.
The U.S. Office of Financial Assets Control added numerous crypto wallets from the project to its sanction list on August 8.
“Tornado cash was used routinely for legitimate purposes,” Max Bernstein (the DeFi Education Fund’s communications leader) told Decryptin a email. While we wait for the details of the charges against the developer, the following must be clear: Writing and publishing code must always be protected in free societies. Privacy is not a crime.
The governance forum, and Discord server that are connected to Tornado cash have been closed since last week’s arrest. Decrypt was also informed by a representative of the project that the code for the project had been removed form GitHub but that it did not affect Tornado Cash contracts.
Jesse Powell, Kraken CEO, joined an increasing number of industry leaders in protesting the sanctions on Tuesday. He stated to Bloomberg, that the U.S. ban against the app was ” unconstitutional.”
