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

Lawyers for family say Saudi government took brother's data in breach and arrested, tortured, and imprisoned' him and others

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.