Our investigation about #Arvancloud was a rabbit hole. One little sideshow-fact was to see how money can apparently be sent to Iran by @paypal, using the German company Rheinmond GmbH. Does Paypal ignore the US-Sanctions? #MahsaAmini 🧵
This picture was sent by a source:
This picture was sent by a source:
Rheinmond has the same CEO as Softqloud, the company that was in Arvanclouds Imprint and apparently was running the datacenters in Frankfurt and Dronten as part of Irans National Internet Project: Ms. Nafas.
The paypal picture was taken by a source, she says, when she bought an ebook on the Iranian platform Taaghche.com
I want to underline, that I was not present and there, when the ebook was bought and I cannot check this securely. Trying to reproduce it today didn't seem to work anymore, only credit cards where taken (also interesting). But I trust this source.
I also want to underline, that I perceive sanctions against countries as two sides swords: especially blocking access to books and information is something that will sanction citizen while the aggressor in Irans case is quite clearly the islamic regime.
The whole Arvancloud story is complex. The company in Iran now says they want to sue us on international ground. The reasons are fishy, the instruments they mention cannot work for this. Seems like the repetition of their PR strategy: "we don't censor".
https://twitter.com/ArvanCloud/status/1583517024739024896
To be clear: we never wrote that Arvancloud censors. We showed how it is part of the National Internet Strategy "NIN" and you can check it out in the official documents that now have been leaked. Page 1 of the National infrastructure Program:
Page 152 of the same:
But as complex as the investigation – also is the ethical situation. I think the best PR coup for the company now would be to fight the regimes actions. A simple instagram post by the CEO @PouyaPhl is surely not enough.
Anyway, as usual, thanks a lot to all my fellow reporters @markusreuter_, @jeanbaeck, @MarcusBensmann, @ninabcdefghi, @LinaRusch, @pegah_julia & @plateauton from @correctiv_org, @tazgezwitscher, @netzpolitik_org & @Tagesspiegel.
You can find a good explanation by @markusreuter and translated into farsi by @besmaili here:
https://twitter.com/jeanbaeck/status/1583552527114862592
And here the original reports: Tagesspiegel. (German) interaktiv.tagesspiegel.de/lab/firmen-abl…
netzpolitik (German): netzpolitik.org/2022/meerbusch…
taz (German): taz.de/Iranische-Tarn…
Correctiv (German): correctiv.org/aktuelles/2022…
Ah I finally found the tweet that made us look at this. Thank you, @hamonfox
https://twitter.com/hamonfox/status/1489877335725772801
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