What is the Indian venture capitalist 'Appin' that pressures Reuters and other major media to delete articles?

The venture capitalist 'Appin', which pressured Reuters through a local court to temporarily delete the article after publishing an article exposing corporate-sponsored hacking, is now involved not only in Reuters but also in global information manipulation. It became clear that he was complicit.

Who Is Killing All These Stories About Rajat Khare, Controversial Tech Mogul?

In November 2023, Reuters published a special investigative article headlined “How an Indian startup hacked the world.” The story goes like ``How India-based Appin became a hacker-for-hire stealing secrets from executives, politicians, military personnel, and elites around the world.'' According to Reuters, Appin has been working for more than 10 years. It is said that he has been contracted by other companies to infiltrate systems and hack data for many years.

However, just three weeks after the article was published, a local court in India ordered Reuters to remove the article. Reuters followed this up by deleting the article and instead posted a text indicating that the article had been temporarily deleted.

Reuters has announced that it is considering an appeal against this decision, and strongly condemns the fact that it was unilaterally asked to delete the report despite the article's legitimacy backed by testimonies. Masu.

Reuters report exposing ``Indian rental hacker business'' deleted by court order - GIGAZINE

According to news media The Daily Beast, the court made this decision because of pressure from Appin, and Appin's co-founder Rajat Khare is not only in India, but also in the US, UK, Switzerland, and France. The same pressure is being applied to other news organizations.

According to two people familiar with the matter, the Sunday Times, a British daily newspaper, received legal threats after publishing an article about Mr. Khare and deleted the article. Paperjam, a Luxembourg-based business news outlet, has also significantly changed the content of its article and removed references to allegations related to cyber activity after discussions with Mr. Khare's advisors.

In Switzerland, at the request of a lawyer representing Khare, Khare was released from an article in SRF Investigativ alleging that Appin was supporting the Qatari government and spying on FIFA officials ahead of the 2022 World Cup. We have obtained an injunction ordering the names to be removed. Similar articles about Mr. Khare have also been deleted by other Indian-based publishers, such as Times of India and Scroll.

Claire Locke, the law firm that worked to remove the article at Khale's request, said through a representative, ``Khare has dedicated much of his career to the field of information technology security, specifically in cyber defense and preventing unauthorized hacking.'' It is truly unfortunate that he has been the subject of false accusations of involvement in the 'hacker-for-hire' industry and of supporting or participating in fraudulent hacking and cyber operations. 'Such accusations are completely false,' he said, expressing his opinion that the request to delete the article was justified.

The Daily Beast points out, ``What is troubling to press freedom activists is the scale of his efforts to kill articles across three continents.'' Scott Griffen, deputy director of the International Press Institute, told The Daily Beast: 'This is certainly a series of lawsuits against the media involved that are very concerning. 'We are seeing an increase in lawsuits of this nature to censor and censor. Business people with great power have to accept and withstand the public scrutiny that comes with their position.' I pointed out.