Based on the materials of the site - By TheCoinrise Media
Roman Storm, co-founder of the cryptocurrency mixing platform Tornado Cash, has publicly spoken out as he prepares to face court less than two weeks from now in the United States. In a video interview published on Wednesday by Crypto In America, Storm stated that his legal team plans to challenge the accusations that he personally profited from illegal funds while working on the Tornado Cash project.
However, Storm did not provide any testimony during the upcoming proceedings, stating: "This is a decision we will make. I don’t have a 100% answer right now. I can do it or not."
The U.S. government charged Storm in 2023, a year after the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash addresses, accusing the service of facilitating money laundering for North Korea's Lazarus Group using stolen crypto assets. The charges against him include money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business, and conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions.
The community unites in defense of Storm
Storm's lawsuit has received widespread support from the crypto community, many see this case as a turning point for developers' rights and privacy in decentralized finance. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Paradigm founder Matt Huang, and the Ethereum Foundation contributed to the legal defense of the co-founder, helping raise over $750,000 by the end of June.
Despite the support, Storm spoke about the personal losses this case has caused him. "It's so devastating. You believed in one thing, you believed in common sense, there is misunderstanding, and then you face these harsh things in your life," he said, adding that he would need time to recover before returning to work in the crypto space.
The trial is set for July 14 in New York
The trial is scheduled to begin on July 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the legal scope of privacy tools in the crypto ecosystem and the liability of developers creating open-source protocols is expected to be examined.
While Storm is awaiting trial, Roman Semyonov, another developer mentioned in the same indictment, remains at large, while his co-founder Alexey Pertsev has been convicted of money laundering in the Netherlands and sentenced to more than five years in prison.
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