An individual who claims to have previously worked at Worldcoin under the name Nadir Hajarabi has raised that the Human ID Verification Project may have engaged in illegal activities during its work.
It is likely that there will be very suspicious activity
In a YouTube video posted on August 23, Al-Hajarabi stated that during their time with Worldcoin they witnessed what they considered “extremely suspicious” activity, which may have included “reckless and/or illegal actions.” These views prompted them to leave the project before the token was launched on July 24. According to them, the organization has withheld part of their salaries and has been in talks with authorities in several jurisdictions as part of the investigations into Worldcoin.
According to Hajrabi, implementation of the Worldcoin project was “disastrous,” as cuts were made before the white paper was published. They claimed to have noticed warning signs “from day one”. Both the CEO of Worldcoin and the organization’s legal team have been contacted, but have reportedly not received satisfactory answers regarding alleged discrepancies between the task and its implementation.
“I didn’t get paid for my hard work during ETHCC and ETH Global because I started asking questions,” Hajarabi told Cointelegraph. “It is not fair and I will not allow me to be silenced and financially abused. Even if my access is limited, I will stand up for what is rightfully mine. A company that pretends to fix financial injustice is not supposed to cause financial harm to employees.
Claims are difficult to fully verify
However, it is difficult to independently verify Hijrabi’s claims, including their alleged provision of “specialized services” to the company. The photo posted to X (formerly Twitter) appears to show that they own one of the project’s iris scan spheres. Al-Hijrabi’s YouTube channel, created in September 2013, contained only one video of the allegations against Worldcoin. An X account, said to be run by the same person, posted an image of an ETHGlobal Paris badge bearing Hajrabi’s name and its association with Worldcoin.
linkedinpage Al-Hajrabi, who was mentioned in the YouTube video, appears to be referring to the same Paris-based individual with expertise in non-fungible currencies, Web3 projects, and smart contracts.
World Coin Project
The Worldcoin project was originally created with the goal of distinguishing between real people and automated bots using scans of their retinas as part of an identity verification process using orbs. Prior to the launch of the Worldcoin token in July, more than two million people had signed up.
Prior to the launch of both the Worldcoin token and the verification process, concerns were raised about the project within and outside the cryptocurrency community, particularly regarding user data privacy issues. The Bavarian State Office for Supervision of Data Protection reportedly launched an investigation into Worldcoin in November 2022, while the French National Commission for Informatics and Freedoms reportedly described the project’s data collection methods as “questionable”. The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office has also expressed similar concerns about the project.
In August, Kenya’s interior minister announced that the country would suspend domestic operations of Worldcoin until the authorities had a chance to assess any potential risk to the population, including raiding and confiscating the organization’s equipment. The Argentine Agency for Access to Public Information later announced that it would launch an investigation into Worldcoin’s collection, storage and use of customer data, citing security and privacy concerns.
