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The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has ordered that investigations into Worldcoin, the cryptocurrency project by Tools For Humanity, be closed with no further police action.

The company, whose operations in Kenya were suspended in August last year so that authorities could investigate whether there were any security risks, had been dishing out free cryptocurrencies to unsuspecting Kenyans in exchange for providing their iris scans to obtain new digital identities.

Responding to inquiries from the company’s lawyers, Coulson Harney LLP, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said in a letter dated May 21 that the investigation was concluded and the case 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,” said the June 14 DCI letter signed by Hillary Kimutai.

The closure of the probe is likely to pave the way for its return to Kenya and the resumption of World ID registration.

Allay of allegations Detectives investigated an array of allegations into the activities of Worldcoin in Kenya in 2022/3 that touched on alleged unlawful collection and transfer of personal sensitive data, said Kimutai, a superintendent of police and deputy head of the DCI’s Serious Crime Unit.

As a result, the DCI advised Worldcoin that to continue its operations prudently, the company should be properly registered and licensed. Worldcoin was advised to ensure all third-party vendors and legal contracting in Kenya are properly vetted.

The company’s operations were suspended in Kenya in August 2023 after claims that it lacked proper papers. Company officials said they welcomed the new developments.

“We are grateful for the DCI’s fair investigation and for the Director of Public Prosecutions’ determination to close the matter. This welcome result is, however, not an end but a beginning,” operations director Thomas Scott said yesterday.

He added: “We will continue working with the Government of Kenya and others and we hope to resume World ID registration across the country soon. “For today, we are just pleased to return our focus to advancing Worldcoin’s mission: creating opportunities for people in Kenya and elsewhere to participate in the global economy.”

A month after Worldcoin operations were suspended, President William Ruto met its founder, Sam Altman, but the details of what they discussed were not released. 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. Eyeballs scanned The verification process involved scanning one’s eyeballs with an orb in exchange for a digital identity called World ID.

The concerns were heightened when it was announced that new members would get 25 free cryptocurrency tokens, known as WLD after the verification, valued at Sh8,256 at the time. Following 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 but were optimistic they would resume operations in the country.

TFH is a Germany-based global hardware and software company that 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 social media platform X. “World ID is built fon an August 3 post on social media platform X.

“World ID is built for privacy. We look forward to resuming operations while continuing global rollout.” Crypto app On September 14, 2023, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki told the Senate that the government was analysing the hardware components OpenAI used to collect data from Kenyans for the project.

TFH had said two weeks earlier that it 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.

About five million people globally have a World ID, the company says on its website, 2.6 million of them 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 supports integrations for its World ID with Minecraft, Reddit, Telegram, Shopify and Mercado Libre.