Samourai Wallet co-founder cites FinCEN guidelines to seek dismissal of lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Gate News bot news, the co-founders of the Bitcoin privacy application Samourai Wallet, Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, were previously charged with operating an unlicensed remittance business and conspiracy to commit Money Laundering. They filed a joint motion requesting a federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss the charges.

They argued in a new court filing that the Department of Justice's case should be dismissed because it violates years of Treasury policy and could potentially classify open-source software as criminal.

The lawyers for both parties stated that Samourai Wallet has never handled user funds and, according to federal law, should not be considered a financial institution or money transfer service.

The core of the controversy lies in the distinction between custodial services (which are responsible for controlling client assets) and non-custodial tools like Samourai, which only assist users in using mixing services like CoinJoin to obscure blockchain transactions.

According to the motion, Samourai users always have control over their cryptocurrency, and the application merely coordinates privacy transactions between users.

The developer's defense cited the long-standing guidance of the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which states that anonymous software providers are not subject to money transfer regulations.

Source: CoinDesk