Judge rules: OFAC's lifting of sanctions on Tornado Cash cannot be used as a basis for trial

PANews reported on July 9 that according to CoinDesk, Katherine Polk Failla, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, ruled that the history of US OFAC sanctions against the privacy tool cannot be discussed in the upcoming trial of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. The judge believes that explaining to the jury the sanctions process that was implemented in 2022, revoked in March 2023, and ruled illegal by a Texas court will cause "mental confusion", but reserves the possibility of reopening the discussion if key evidence emerges.

The prosecutors were allowed to use evidence extracted from the phone of co-developer Alexey Pertsev, but they could not accuse Storm of violating the Bank Secrecy Act - they could only prove through expert witnesses that it "could have implemented but did not adopt" KYC/AML measures. The judge also rejected the defendant's motion to exclude evidence related to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group and prohibited Storm from using the "First Amendment" as a defense. The final pre-trial conference will be held in the form of a telephone conference at 3 pm Eastern Time on Friday.