New York, New York – US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) A federal judge ruled Tuesday that sanctions on privacy tool Tornado Cash cannot be discussed in the upcoming trial of developer Rome Storm.
At a status meeting in Manhattan on Tuesday, District Judge Katherine Polk Failla initially pleaded with whether she allowed expert witnesses to testify, the sanction was initially imposed in August 2022, which was subsequently ruled by a Texas court.
After hearing the debate on prosecution and defense, Farah decided to approve the storm’s motion on the restrictive, restrictive side to ban testimony against sanctions, deeming it too confusing for the jury to do what she described as “psychological gymnastics” to understand why the sanctions were imposed and eventually cancelled and eventually cancelled.
“I will rule out references to the OFAC sanctions in August 2022,” Farara said, warning that she will leave behind the possibility of “unicorn documents” which is a key evidence of the alleged behaviors of the storm after the imposition of the sanctions – which may change her mind, which may change her mind. Failla gave prosecutors any such evidence until Wednesday. Judge Rule earlier Tuesday The parties are not allowed to discuss the case of Van Loon v. Treasury, which ultimately leads to sanctions.
The rest of the storm is restricted (Pretrial motion that excludes certain evidence or arguments during trial) It was denied, including a motion that excluded mentions of the North Korean state-approved hacker group Lazarus Group, and a motion to stop the sale of storm losses. Earlier in the day, prosecutors said they planned to present evidence that the storm made a huge profit from his involvement in tornado cash, including allegedly buying multiple homes and selling a value of $12 million after approved tornado cash.
Prosecutors say they do not intend to argue at trial that the storm violates the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) By not implementing a knowledge client/anti-monetary money laundering scheme for tornado cash, it is simply through testimony of its expert witnesses that he can and choose not to do so.
Failla also ruled that the government was able to provide evidence from a phone call from Alexey Pertsev, a Tornado cash developer in Storm. Dutch government allows the FBI (FBI) The agent wants to view the report on the content of the Pertsev mobile phone, from which the agent uses the selected information to make its own report. Storm’s defense tried to throw away Pertsev’s phone evidence, believing that the report was selected for cherries and could not be verified, but the judge supported the prosecution and ruled that the report was acceptable.
After walking back and forth between the two parties between their respective expert witnesses, Failla ruled that all witnesses could testify, although she put some guardrails on some witnesses on both sides.
It is unclear whether Storm will testify in his defense, although Failla said Tuesday that if he stands, he will not allow him to argue that he has put the amendment protection for the first time in his collaboration with Tornado Cash.
Failla said Storm was free to discuss his belief in privacy, but said: “I don’t think there should be freedom of speech or the First Amendment right in this trial.”
The last pre-trial meeting will be held Friday at 3 p.m. ET. Storm’s trial is scheduled to begin on June 14 and is expected to last for four weeks.
