Developer of Tornado Cash mixer to remain in jail until February due to risk of escape

According to the ruling of the Dutch court, the developer of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, will be detained for at least 90 days, i.e. until February 2023. The court rejected the request of the developer’s lawyers for bail. Officially, Pertsev has not yet been charged with any illegal actions.

Pertsev was arrested on August 10 in Amsterdam by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), two days after the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash, linking it to North Korean hackers Lazarus Group and illegal transactions worth more than $ 1 billion.

Web3 developers have been protesting the arrest of the Tornado Cash developer for several months. IT experts are concerned that the precedent could harm the community, as other open source software developers may also be held accountable for how their products are used.

In late August, a rally against Pertsev’s arrest was held on Dam Square in Amsterdam. Some protesters raised posters with the words «open source is not a crime». People called on the government to update legislation «for the open source era».

Among the protesters was also Pertsev’s wife Ksenia Malik. She complained that she was forbidden to talk to her husband, who is treated as a «dangerous criminal.» In late August, Malik denied claims made on the Kharon financial crime analysts' blog that Pertsev allegedly worked for a company that the US government linked to the Russian FSB. «Alexey has never been associated with the Russian FSB or similar organizations. We moved to the Netherlands in the hope of a calm, stable and free life, which is impossible to imagine in military Russia,» Malik explained at the time.