• • The lawyers of Tornado Cash co-founder have filed a motion to dismiss the charges of money laundering and concealing criminal financial flows.

• • Roman Storm’s lawyers have provided legal grounds in favor of their request.

• • The entrepreneur has been charged with several counts, each carrying a prison term of 5 to 20 years.

Roman Storm, the co-founder of Tornado Cash, has had his lawyers file a court motion to dismiss all charges against him. In the document, the lawyers provide grounds in favor of such a decision.

According to them, Storm could not have conspired with criminals since he gave up control of the service long before any illegal activities took place. They also believe that Tornado Cash cannot be considered a money transfer business as the project never charged for its services.

Furthermore, the lawyers assert that writing code falls under the protection of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech. They argue this extends to the writing of software.

Storm’s defense is confident that all charges leveled against the developer are “fatally flawed”.

“At their core, these claims represent an unprecedented attempt to criminalize software development, which Storm and his colleagues had the right to write under the First Amendment,” the motion states.

The US authorities imposed a ban on the use of the Tornado Cash mixer in August 2022. Shortly after, the project’s founder Alexey Pertsev was detained in Amsterdam. He was charged with concealing criminal financial flows and money laundering.

A year later, the US government lodged claims against Roman Storm and his colleague Roman Semenov. They are suspected of laundering over $1 billion. The developers were also accused of conspiring to violate the “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” and running an illegal money transfer business.