His appeal against Alexey Pertsev, an arrested Tornado cash developer, has been denied. He will remain in prison until late November at the most, his wife told The Block. Ksenia Malik’s wife fears that Pertsev will seize all his property and have it auctioned.
Alexey Pertsev is a Tornado Cash developer who was arrested by Dutch authorities in August for facilitating money laundering. He will remain in jail at least two more months after his appeal was denied.
Ksenia Malik’s wife Pertsev said that a Dutch judge dismissed Pertsev’s appeal on Thursday. Ksenia Malik, Pertsev’s wife, said that the Dutch Public Prosecution Service and Fiscal Information and Investigation Service did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pertsev was born in Russia and has been held in custody since August 10. Two days earlier, the U.S. government added Tornado Cash and 44 USDC wallets to their Specially Designated Nationals List. According to the U.S. Treasury, crypto-mixing service that allows users to hide transactions had repeatedly failed to implement effective controls to prevent it from laundering funds for malicious cyber attackers.
Pertsev (29 years old) Tornado Cash developer will remain in custody up to Nov. 22 according to Thursday’s ruling.
Malik stated that Pertsev was not to be believed and that the rejection was “absolutely unfair”. She stated that “absolutely lawlessness is going on here.”
She continued by saying that the Dutch authorities “afraid Alex will return to Russia. However, if he does, he will still be sent to war.” In February, Russia invaded Ukraine.
According to Malik, Dutch prosecutors are planning to seize Pertsev’s property and make it available for auction. According to Malik, Pertsev’s lawyer said that Pertsev had taken his car on the day of his arrest and that the vehicle would be sold by prosecutors.
Malik answered a question about whether Dutch prosecutors could seize assets of an arrested person without them being charged with anything.
“At this time, they only have a car. But I believe they could come and take another vehicle at any time. She said that she doesn’t feel safe. Prosecutors will auction “all of our legal assets, leaving me with nothing.”
Many in the crypto industry have condemned Pertsev’s arrest. A group of around 50 privacy and crypto advocates demonstrated last month in Amsterdam. Malik was involved in the organization of the demonstration. Protestors argued that Pertsev shouldn’t be held responsible for writing open source code, no matter how it was used by bad actors.
