Crypto

Coin Center Filed Suit Against OFAC to Sanction Tornado Cash

10/13/2022
Bitcoin Ethereum News
  • Coin Center filed a second lawsuit against the Office of Foreign Assets Control in Federal District Court.
  • The filing challenges the authority of OFAC to sanction Tornado Cash immutable smart contracts.

On October 12, 2022 the Executive Director of Coin Center, Jerry Brito announced in the twitter thread that Coin Center filed suit against the U.S. Treasury Department that alleged its sanctioning of Tornado Cash exceeded legal boundaries.

In continuation, he further stated that they not only fight for privacy rights but as this precedent will allow it to stand, the OFAC able to add entire protocols like Bitcoin or Ethereum to the sanctions list in near future. So, immediately banning them without any public process is all needed. This can not go unchallenged.

Brito aims to win this challenge even if it requires going to the Supreme Court and will keep updating about the case. Moreover, he further attached the link of the blog that gave complete information related to their suit against OFAC.

Coin Center Lawsuit Makes Four Claims

The claims added by Coin Center along with a group of normal privacy-seeking workers, donors, activists, and public figures, was to keep privacy normal, to delist Tornado Cash privacy tools from sanctions, and to enjoin Treasury from enforcing against ordinary Americans exercising their self-evident and basic rights to privacy. The non-profit think tank pointed to all these reasons and more to oppose Treasury’s extra legal usage of its sanctions authority. 

Coin Center said big thank to its co-plaintiffs Patrick O’Sullivan, a Software developer, David Hoffman of Bankless who was the victim of a ‘dusting’ attack, and the anonymous operator of the 688th Support Brigade, which relied on Tornado Cash to gather funds to purchase equipment for Ukrainian soldiers. And its legal team from Consovoy McCarthy and Abraham Sutherland.

Lastly, it ended it as “Privacy is normal, and when we win our lawsuit, using Tornado Cash will be normal again.”

It can be seen that in August, OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash, and claimed North Korean hackers laundered hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of crypto through the mixer since its launch. 

The Federal Government alleged that around like 20% of Tornado Cash’s overall transaction volume was tied to one hack or another. On the other hand, the crypto industry disputed the move and pointed toward the fact that “OFAC does not normally sanction software and the fact that Tornado Cash does not have any central operator.”

It must be noted that, Coin Center previously filed a lawsuit against the Treasury in June 2022, alleging that a tax reporting rule enacted into law last year as part of a broader infrastructure bill is “unconstitutional.”

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Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/10/13/coin-center-filed-suit-against-ofac-to-sanction-tornado-cash/