The answer is expected to be signed and marked with a QR code by:
"Andrii SHARONOV First Deputy Chief, Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine."
The Respondent did not clarify whether, following the reply, she contacted the Ukrainian law enforcement authorities, and if so, what their response was.
- In the supplementary argument on the question of jurisdiction dated January 28, 2026, the respondent reiterated its claim that its application to Tether was on the voluntary level and did not involve "exercise of authority", and that "in any case the honorable court's order has no extraterritorial coercive validity", and the source of the authority to appeal to it is section 3 of the Police Ordinance.
According to her, once the company voluntarily and by virtue of its policy handed over the digital token to the control of the respondent, then "the seizure of the property (the digital token) in a police wallet, its possession in a police wallet and the execution of any conversion action in respect of it (in the future) - all of these will be carried out in accordance with the judicial order issued by the honorable court on May 20, 2025 by virtue of section 34 of the IPC."
According to the respondent's position, "the relevant authority is always examined in relation to the extent of the coercive act in the authority's action. To the extent that the exercise of the power has clear coercive characteristics, then the authority will be required to provide more detailed and concrete authorization that originates from primary legislation. On the other hand, insofar as we are dealing with an action that does not include the character of a coercive act - as in our case - there is no impediment to the authority acting by virtue of its general powers in [such cases]."
According to its approach, the proprietary rights of the claimants to the right are preserved, first by granting the order in question, and secondly by granting the right thereafter by filing an application to the court to annul it, as the appellant did.
- According to the Respondent, the Inter-State Legal Aid Law does not prescribe a negative arrangement that prevents action on the voluntary level to prevent or investigate offenses in the online space. In this case, the help of local law enforcement authorities (in Ukraine) was not required, as Tether acted first and foremost "to protect itself" according to its policy published on its website.
- Another argument raised by the Respondent is that the TRON blockchain is a "multi-arena event in cyberspace", where, unlike classic assets held "physically" by banks and financial corporations, the network is decentralized between different servers, at different "nodes", controlled by Tether, and the token is located "in the global space of the network"". Therefore, and unlike a bank account, its seizure on the Internet does not infringe on the sovereignty of any state, and therefore it is not necessary to act along the route prescribed in the Legal Aid Law between States.
- In completing the appellant's argument on the question of jurisdiction, dated February 3, 2026, the appellant presented in great detail new factual claims, according to which law enforcement officials in Ukraine provided the appellant with details about a conversation that the respondent's representative had with them, and that after the court hearing, the respondent's representatives sent materials and documents to the Ukrainian authorities for examination, outside the framework set out in the Legal Aid Law between States. After an examination conducted by three authorities in Ukraine, the Cyber Unit, the Investigations Unit and the State Attorney's Office, and after a confrontation with the appellant's version, the respondent was informed - so claimed by the appellant's counsel that he heard from the appellant - "the result of the examination according to which the appellant is not involved in any criminal activity, certainly unconsciously and certainly not indirectly." To this, he added more harsh claims, saying that "[that] this is a very serious conduct that cannot be put on the agenda." I did not find it necessary to repeat the details of the claims, since in the response submitted to the Authority, the respondent's counsel clarified that these statements were unfounded, and that with the exception of an initial conversation that Superintendent Weiss had with the Ukrainian police (the details of which were not brought to me), the matter was baseless. Indeed, at the beginning of the hearing that took place on February 19, 2026, in response to the court's question, counsel for the appellant confirmed that he had no documentation of the moves that he had put in writing (ibid., p. 3, para. 16).
Therefore, and without going into details, the appellant's counsel would have done well to refrain from raising these arguments, whether in writing or orally, without having even a preliminary documentation of their truthfulness. This is especially so, when the completion of the argument was required for the question of jurisdiction alone.
- 00As to the question of jurisdiction, the appellant' s counsel reiterated his arguments, and referred to section 53 of the Interstate Legal Aid Law, which deals with a request to carry out a search and seizure in another country.
- As to the claims regarding the structure of the blockchain network managed by Tether, the appellant's counsel argued that the company exclusively controls all the USDT tokens, and manages a "centralized and decentralized network", as a kind of bank of all such tokens, as a kind of bank, "that the holder of the tokens is similar to a customer of the bank who deposits his money in the bank, and in terms of lists and the owner of the money is registered in his name and belongs to him, but the bank has the right to operate with the customer's money in any way it deems appropriate...."Unlike the TRON network, this is not a decentralized network.
- As stated, the respondent responded with permission to the appellant's arguments. With regard to the question of authority, she reiterated her arguments. Regarding the nature of the blockchain network, the respondent claimed that the digital assets are not located in the company's secure "vault" on servers in El Salvador, but are "deployed as a token (TRC-20) on the TRON blockchain , which the appellant's counsel agrees is a decentralized blockchain network." Therefore, these assets are located on the blockchain without attribution to a specific geographical place, and freezing them is not a "state event".
- In the second hearing, which took place on February 19, 2026, the respondent's counsel was presented with the binding wording of the order in question, and replied "that the order itself, in its generic format, as it is constructed from a miraculous system of the Israel Police, gives the impression that there is a coercive order without extraterritorial authority, the court will see it and I passed it on, this is an accurate comment, why, because that is not what the order does, It is not for nothing that we clarified that the order itself is directed at the police and receives authorization from the court" (ibid., p. 4, para. 18). In response to the court's comment, he added: "If the court thinks there is a problem with the voluntary practice, that's one thing. It's a completely different thing... Reformulating it and bringing it back before the trial court is something else entirely" (ibid., p. 5).
- On March 1, 2026, the Respondent filed a notice stating that it had applied to the trial court to clarify its intention in the order dated May 20, 2025, and that the trial court rejected the request by stating:
"After the application submitted on February 22, 2026 to the District Court was brought to review, and given that the court's decision has not yet been given, and out of respect for the decisions of the District Court, the Applicant will proceed with the application after a decision has been made in the District Court."