Monero’s (XMR) lead developer team decided to take preventive action once they learned of the arrest of the project’s lead developer, Riccardo Spagni.
Although the case has nothing to do with the privacy-focused cryptocurrency, Monero administrators they eliminated all access permissions to the code repositories that Spagni had open. In December 2019, the developer also known as “Fluffypony” resigned from the main project team, but never fully disengaged from it.
Following his arrest, developer Jeremie Dubois-Lacoste or binaryFate on Twitter reported the details via a thread on the micromanagement service. It also revealed that, as part of the preventive measures, was left out of the reach of Spagni, the General Fund of the project. About 5,577 XMR, equivalent to USD 1,293,864 at the time of writing this note.
BinaryFate clarified that with this action the Monero team does not intend to express any presumption of guilt or innocence with respect to the arrest of “Fluffypony”.
In case you’re not clear, the only reason to potentially remove critical access is because [Spagni] could be pressured while in custody. It has nothing to do with him being guilty or innocent or what we think about it. I hope to reinstall them soon [los permisos de acceso].
Jeremie Dubois-Lacoste, developer of Monero.
Ricardo Spagni resigned in 2019 as the main developer of Monero, the community has not stopped seeing him as the leader of the project. Source: Reddit / Monero.
As reported by CriptoNoticias, Spagni was arrested by police authorities in the state of Tennessee, in the United States, on July 20 when he was on a private flight to Los Cabos, in Mexico.
Spagni is accused of falsifying invoices and record fraud committed between 2009 and 2011, when he was an information technology (IT) manager at the South African food company Cape Cookies. According to court documents He is being held without bail pending his extradition hearing, the date of which has not yet been set.
To avoid extradition, “Fluffypony” has hired lawyer Brian Klein, according to digital media. They add that Klein has filed a motion to allow Spagni to be released on bail until his extradition hearing.
Counsel asserted in the motion that the US government “misrepresented the facts and applicable laws of this matter” and that the case against Spagni “is fatally flawed” due to lack of evidence and that the prosecution “stopped It started and lasted for more than ten years.