Judge signals Tornado Cash sanctions may be barred from Roman Storm trial
The judge reportedly said she would not be inclined to have attorneys bring up the US Treasury’s 2022 sanctions against Tornado Cash after they were withdrawn in March.
The judge overseeing the US criminal trial of Tornado Cash co-founder and developer Roman Storm said she was “inclined” to disallow any mention of the 2022 sanctions against the cryptocurrency mixing service in court.
According to reporting from Inner City Press on Tuesday, Judge Katherine Failla of the US District Court of the Southern District of New York said she was unlikely to grant a motion prohibiting the mention of North Korea and the hackers in the Lazarus Group as part of prosecutors’ case against Storm. However, the judge reportedly said she was “inclined to keep out the August 2022 sanctions, since they were later withdrawn.”
The sanctions in question referred to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions adding addresses connected to Tornado Cash to its list of Specially Designated Nationals in 2022. However, after a federal judge ordered the repeal of sanctions as part of a civil case filed by Tornado Cash users, OFAC backtracked on the crypto mixer in March.
