After more than a month in jail, Riccardo Spagni, the former chief maintainer of the privacy coin Monero, has been released. He has stated that his attorneys are working to get the matter addressed once and for all.
Spagni said he was working with his legal team to return to South Africa to answer the allegations against him in a tweet on Tuesday.
Spagni was arrested in August in the United States on fraud charges related to alleged offences committed in South Africa between 2009 and 2011 at a firm named Cape Cookies.
“I am actively working with my solicitors on a method to return to South Africa as soon as possible so that I can deal with this situation and put it behind me,” Spagni said. “I’ve always wanted to do something like that.”
The South African government had sought Spagni’s extradition on the accusations, stating that he “used fake information” to fabricate invoices that inflated prices for some goods and services and had monies transferred to a bank account he controlled. He might face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
Although someone likely his lawyers did retweet a statement written to his wife’s Twitter account shortly after his detention, Spagni hasn’t tweeted since July. The arrest, according to the legal team, was for “his alleged failure to appear in court, and nothing more.”
Spagni has been working in the crypto sector for more than a decade and was the chief maintainer of the privacy coin Monero (XMR) until December 2019.
Many people are familiar with him because of his witty social media remarks about bitcoin projects and industry figures.