Tornado Cash saga continues, this time taking the US Treasury to court.
Coin Center, a United States-based non-profit organization working on policy issues regarding cryptocurrencies, has filed a lawsuit against the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) over Tornado Cash sanctions.
According to the complaint filed by Coin Center, crypto investor David Hoffman, software developer Patrick O’Sullivan, and anonymous human-rights activists dubbed John Doe, Tornado Cash sanctions were imposed unlawfully.
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The lawsuit filed for the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida claims that OFAC “exceeded their statutory authority” in sanctioning Tornado Cash and its addresses, arguing that OFAC did it because the mixer is a “privacy tool beyond the control of anyone.”
The Coin Center claims that OFAC stepped over its boundaries and “defined its own rules on the books” by imposing the sanctions. According to Coin Center, these sanctions can be considered a violation of the constitutional right to privacy.
By filing the lawsuit, Coin Center asks the court to remove Tornado Cash from OFAC's Specially Designated National list with claims that “the criminalization of Tornado Cash is null, void, and with no force or effect.” Moreover, Coin Center, Hoffman, O’Sullivan, and John Doe aim to receive compensation on attorneys’ fees and other costs related to the proceedings or “any other relief that the Court deems just and proper.”
Coin Center executive director Jerry Brito took to Twitter to comment on the lawsuit, claiming:
Not only are we fighting for privacy rights, but if this precedent is allowed to stand, OFAC could add entire protocols like Bitcoin or Ethereum to the sanctions list in [the] future, thus immediately banning them without any public process whatsoever. This can't go unchallenged.
It is worth uncovering the events that took place in August after the US Treasury sanctioned Tornado Cash and 44 USD Coin and Ether addresses. More specifically, OFAC added the mixer and its addresses to the Specially Designated National list, prohibiting US citizens from interacting with these entities.
Following the sanctions, on August 12th, Dutch authorities arrested Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev blaming him for using Torando Cash for money laundering.
