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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

Twitter ‘unfit’ for banking over alleged complicity in Saudi rights abuses

A woman with long brown hair and black aviator sunglasses stands outdoors beside a taller man wearing a black graduation cap and black robe with a gold-colored mantle, his arm around her shoulders and her leaning into him. Both appear Middle Eastern and both are smiling.
Areej al-Sadhan (left) and Abdulrahman at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, on 4 May 2013. The family has not seen Abdulrahman since 2021. Photograph: AP

The company formerly known as Twitter is “unfit” to hold banking licenses because of its alleged “intentional complicity” with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and treatment of users’ personal data, according to an open letter sent to federal and state banking regulators that was signed by a law firm representing a Saudi victim’s family.

The allegations by lawyers representing Areej al-Sadhan, whose brother Abdulrahman was one of thousands of Saudis whose confidential personal information was obtained by Saudi agents posing as Twitter employees in 2014-15, comes as Twitter Payments LLC, a subsidiary of X (the company formerly known as Twitter), is in the process of applying for money-transmitter licenses across the US.

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