Alleged Tornado Cash Developer Must Stay In Jail For 90 Days, Netherland Court Announces

• The Netherland court has announced its decision to retain Pertsev in custody. 
• Alleged developer of Tornado cash app must stay in jail for 90 days 

Per a CoinDesk report, the alleged developer of the Ethereum mixer app Tornado Cash app must stay in jail for 90 days pending trial, the Netherland court announced its decision on Wednesday. 

Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Must Stay In Jail For 90 Days. 

According to a Coindesk report citing a Dutch court spokesperson, a court hearing held in Den Bosch in the Netherlands today announced its decision to retain Pertsev for 90 days. The court further added that an initial public hearing must take place within the set 90-day period for the proceedings to evolve ahead. 

Per the report, Pertsev’s lawyers had earlier sought a bail request, however, that request was dismissed by the ruling judge. 

Pertsev was arrested on August 10 in Amsterdam, with accusations stating that the developer was involved in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating illicit money laundering.

Pertsev’s arrest had later evolved into a serious online movement where thousands of protesters had filed petitions to spread awareness among the crypto community. As reported by EWN earlier, the protests were carried out with an intention to demonstrate the wrongful arrest of Pertsev and to prove the fact that a developer has no control over how his software might be used in the near future. 

9/9 Protestor & Web3 developer Naomi Schettini said Pertsev is “not responsible for criminals using his code for doing illicit activity. That’s like saying the inventor of the knife is responsible for murders. It’s truly ridiculous.”

Several protestors had also remarked how Pertsev’s arrest is detrimental to the future of open source software development.

Numerous protestors had further shared opinions adding that the judicial authorities should pursue the real criminals/hackers behind such scams instead of going after independent developers and creators. 

This should go without saying:

In a free country, writing code is not a crime.

A country that criminalizes writing code is not free.

It should be crystal clear that arresting & prosecuting software developers is antithetical to the civil rights that democracies must protect.

Amid all this, the US congressman Tom Emmer had questioned the sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash by sending a letter to Treasury Secretary Yellen. Elmer later added how the growing adoption of decentralized technology will raise challenges for OFAC but the related technology should be treated on neutral grounds. 

I sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Yellen regarding the unprecedented sanctioning of Tornado Cash. The growing adoption of decentralized technology will certainly raise new challenges for OFAC. Nonetheless, technology is neutral and the expectation of privacy is normal.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/0aN4a4A6tb

Tornado Cash is an Ethereum-based mixer app that has been broadly used by hackers and scammers to obfuscate the track of their illicit crypto transactions. The extensive usage of the app in numerous hacking and scamming activities led the US authorities to adopt a strict stance towards it by imposing sanctions on it.

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