NAIROBI Kenya, June 19 -The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has directed that investigations into Worldcoin, the crypto currency project by Tools For Humanity, be closed with no further police action.
The company, whose operations were suspended in the country in August last year for probe and to certify the absence of any security risks, had been dishing out free crypto-currencies to unsuspecting Kenyans in exchange for providing their iris scans to obtain new digital identities.
In a letter dated May 21, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said the probe was concluded and the investigation file was forwarded to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for an independent review and advice.
“Upon review of the file, the Director of Public Prosecutions concurred and directed that the file be closed with no further police action,” the DCI letter signed by Hillary Kimutai and dated June 14 reads.
The closure of the probe is likely to pave way for its return to Kenya, and resume World ID registration across the country soon.
Kimutai, a Superintendent of Police and also the deputy head of DCI’s Serious Crime Unit (SCU) said they expeditiously and objectively investigated an array of allegations into the activities Worldcoin in Kenya in 2022/3 and touching on alleged unlawful collection and transfer of personal sensitive data.
As a result, the DCI advised Worldcoin that for prudent continued operations, they consider proper business registration services in liaison with the Registrar of Business registry and proper licensing and Coordination by the office of the Data Protection Commission (ODPC) and the Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK).
Worldcoin was advised to ensure intensive vetting and legal contracting of all third party vendors within the country.
The company operations were suspended in Kenya in August 2023 after claims of lack of proper papers to allow them.
The company operations director Thomas Scott said they were grateful for the developments.
A month after Worldcoin operations were suspended in Kenya in August last year, President William Ruto met its founder Sam Altman. It has however not been disclosed what they discussed.
The Worldcoin project rolled out globally on June 24, 2023.
But despite its ambitions of a decentralised global currency, the project was met with privacy issues.
There were also questions about the security of the biodata the company was collecting from Kenyans.
The verification process involved scanning one’s eyeballs through an Orb in exchange for a digital identity called World ID.
The concerns were heightened by the fact that new members were getting 25 free cryptocurrency tokens known as WLD after the verification, valued at Sh8,256 at the time.
Following the Worldcoin’s suspension, Alex Blania, the project’s CEO who co-founded it with OpenAI boss Altman said they and Tools For Humanity (TFH) were pausing World ID verifications in Kenya to address the government’s concerns while optimistic of resuming operations in the country.
TFH is the Germany-based global hardware and software company, which led the initial development of the Worldcoin protocol.
“TFH has paused World ID verifications in Kenya as we continue to work with local regulators to address their questions. We apologize to everyone in Kenya for the delay,” Blania said in an August 3 post on X.
“World ID is built for privacy. We look forward to resuming operations while continuing global rollout.”
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki told the Senate on September 14 2023 that the government was conducting analysis of the hardware components OpenAI used to collect data from Kenyans for the project.
Tools For Humanity had two weeks prior said they had been scanning people’s irises in Nairobi and other Kenyan urban centres since 2021 when they were piloting the project.
At the start of September 2023, Worldcoin said over 635,000 Kenyans had downloaded the crypto app, although 345,000 had not yet verified their identities by scanning their irises.
Close to 5 million people globally have a World ID, the company says on its website, 2.6 million of which were verified.
The project has since updated to World ID 2.0, which, the company says, makes it easier to distinguish between bots and “verified humans” online.
The new version announced supports integrations for its World ID with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Mercado Libre.
In August last year, CS Kindiki unmasked the Kenyan representatives of the Worldcoin as Emmanuel Otieno who was in charge of operations and Rael Mwende who was the country manager.
The entity hired a company in Kenya called Sense Marketing to do the data capture for them in the country.
Among the foreign nationals associated with Worldcoin, were a Mr Poitr Piwowarczyk who is on record to have entered Kenya on several occasions.
The ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo had earlier said they were operating within the law.
“As far as the Data Act 2019 is concerned, they (Worldcoin) are acting within the law. The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner got wind of this, wrote to the entity and they have had several meetings. We are going to approach this issue from a multifaceted approach,” said Owalo.
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