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National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetangula has given Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki (pictured) and his ICT counterpart, Eliud Owalo, one week to give details regarding the

Worldcoin Crypto-currency tokens and why Kenyans were being paid Sh7,000 each to have their eyeballs scanned.

Wetangula directed the two to provide details to MPs on how the company was registered, whether the data collected amounted to a breach of security and what measures the government had put in place to avoid a recurrence.

He told the two to exclude the office of the data protection commission when carrying out their investigations as some of the officers there could have been compromised in the registration of the said company. “These members want to know who licensed these people to operate here.”

Wetangula made the directive even as Kindiki disclosed that the government will be charging individuals who took part in the collection of the data, arguing that they committed crimes akin to terrorism and banditry.

According to him, to enable them to sustain the case they will be seeking statements from those involved while those outside the country they will be requesting their host countries to have them brought to Kenya to answer to various charges.

He said the activities of the said organisations have not only affected Kenya but have also penetrated other countries in Europe and Asia including the United Kingdom, France, India and Germany.

“On the issue as to whether there was anything we could have done, generally we have made good progress and, we have frozen the movement of every person whether Kenyans or foreign associated with the operations of the said company, all the people even those abroad we will use legal mutual assistance we have them brought to book,” he said.

Data protection

And added: “We believe that crimes have been committed against the data protection act, crimes against the penal code. We will get statements from these people.”

On the data so far collected, Kindiki told the MPs that they already secured preservation orders from the courts that the said data should not be processed adding that experts in ICT have also assured them that they can repossess data that has been saved in the I-cloud.

On whether the entity was registered prior to doing business in the country, he was of the opinion that the company was not registered but carried out its operations through a Kenyan agency that had been registered as a collector of data.