Wu said: The U.S. government has placed the co-founder of Tornado Cash on the sanctions list

According to ChainCatcher news, as reported by Wu, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced a new OFAC SDN sanctions list on August 23, which includes Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov. The announcement states that he is of Russian nationality, previously residing in Dubai, and lists eight of his Ethereum addresses. The announcement cites regulations: secondary sanctions risk, sections 510.201 and 510.210 of the North Korea Sanctions Regulations, and the prohibition of transactions by persons owned or controlled by U.S. financial institutions.

Tornado Cash was blacklisted last year, effectively prohibiting U.S. citizens from using the service. An official statement from U.S. regulators stated that since its launch in 2019, the tool has facilitated the laundering of over $7 billion, including funds from North Korean attackers and other malicious actors. In August 2022, Roman Semenov claimed that his account on the developer platform GitHub was suspended. Russian-born Tornado Cash developer Pertsev was arrested by the Dutch Ministry of Finance and the Information Services Agency in August 2022.