A Texas judge permanently prohibits OFAC from imposing sanctions on Tornado Cash

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has made a final ruling, determining that the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) acted unlawfully in sanctioning Tornado Cash, permanently prohibiting it from imposing sanctions on the mixer. This marks the conclusion of a two-year legal dispute with a victory for the privacy protocol party.

Court documents show that although OFAC voluntarily removed Tornado Cash from the sanctions list in March 2024, Judge Robert Pitman noted its intention to potentially reimpose sanctions in the future and emphasized that "the ruling of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals must be enforced." The six plaintiff attorneys in the case had accused OFAC of attempting to evade judicial review through technical maneuvers.

It is worth noting that two developers of Tornado Cash, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, still face criminal charges from the U.S. Department of Justice, which remains on the OFAC sanctions list. The ruling only pertains to the protocol itself and does not involve judicial proceedings against the developers.