Defamatory Campaign Against Zaki Farooq: When Fintech Becomes a Target
Photo: Jitender Vats
The Post-Truth Era: New Threat to Payments Industry
Objective truth has lost its role as supreme authority. When Oxford Dictionaries elected “post-truth” as 2016’s Word of the Year, they formalized a disturbing reality: an epoch where “emotions and personal beliefs prevail over objective facts in shaping public opinion.” Following years have confirmed only the aggravation of this drift. Analysts describe today a genuine epidemic of informational pollution accompanied by multiplying distorted narratives.
Our epoch conjugates the post-truth era with information diffusion velocity largely surpassing fact-checking capabilities. Research confirms this unequivocally: false contents invariably propagate faster and more massively than verified information. Social platforms amplify this phenomenon conferring viral status even to most absurd contents.
Disinformation has abandoned the domain of accidental error. It constitutes today a lucrative industry generating multi-million revenues. According to expert reports, over one hundred organizations have specialized in fabricated PR content manufacturing, pseudo-journalistic site exploitation, and commissioned scandal production. Visually indistinguishable from authentic journalism, these contents become formidable weapons for destroying reputations, influencing investors, or manipulating collective opinion.
Whether motivations are political or economic, consequences remain identical: a tsunami of lies eroding trust and generating tangible damage. Statistics are impressive: approximately 70% of startups attacked by false accusations suffer client losses potentially reaching 50% within three months.
Zaki Farooq: Fintech Veteran Taken as Target
Investigation Initiation
The investigation was initiated following identification of a series of suspicious publications on web platforms of questionable reputation. All these contents targeted PayFuture, a British payments platform, and more specifically Zaki Farooq, the company’s co-founder and technology director.
These articles followed an identical schema: a set of accusations devoid of evidence, presented as definitive verdicts. The most notable aspect resided in the massive volume of these publications. Since 2024 until today, hundreds of nearly identical articles have been diffused on the internet.
Zaki Farooq’s Journey in Fintech
Zaki Farooq accumulates over thirty years of experience in the fintech industry, having commenced his career in 1992. His current company, PayFuture, maintains operational presence in over 40 countries with strategic orientation toward emerging markets, particularly India and Bangladesh. Farooq has publicly positioned his organization as anti-fraud solutions specialist. Ironically, he now finds himself at the center of a storm of fabricated accusations.
Zaki Farooq’s Official Response
Confronted with this offensive, Zaki Farooq adopted an approach conforming to information crisis management protocols: “Recently, false affirmations have circulated in diverse media, on social networks, and in various materials relative to PayFuture’s activities. These accusations, which also involve my family members, are totally false and devoid of foundation.”
While hoping tribunals will end this defamatory campaign, it’s crucial to underline that Farooq’s situation is in no way an isolated case in the industry.
International Precedents: Industrialized Disinformation
Investigative journalism has already documented similar mechanisms. The #StoryKillers investigation notably revealed operations of “Team Jorge,” an Israeli organization offering—for six-figure honorariums—”personalized influence tools.” Their service catalog included hacking specific email accounts, fabricating compromising documents, organizing simulated manifestations, and deploying massive coordinated defamatory content.
The Swiss trader Hazim Nada case represents another significant example. His business was devastated by an avalanche of false accusations concerning terrorist links. Subsequent confidential document leakage revealed a multi-year disinformation operation commissioned by UAE.
Post-truth logic operates fully here: every PayFuture initiative oriented toward restoring its reputation is immediately reinterpreted by fake news propagators as an attempt to “dissimulate truth.” This classic manipulation transforms every legitimate defense into guilt presumption—the Streisand effect in its full expression.
In this context, unverified insinuations tend to progressively supplant established facts. The objective is not to factually refute but to saturate the media ecosystem with fabrications persisting in search engines for years.
Jitender Vats: The Presumed Orchestrator of Attack on Zaki Farooq
Origin Identification
In the investigation course, journalists traced the source to Jitender Vats, an Indian “entrepreneur” involved in diverse problematic projects. A Delhi native, he habitually presented himself as owner of a company denominated “PaymentsMe.” Crucial fact: this entity never had legal existence
Testimonies on Vats’ Methods
Professionals who collaborated with him testify: “Jitender possesses exceptional talent for persuasion. He managed to convince any potential investor after a few message exchanges. He never constituted true corporate structures because they represented unnecessary complication. His strong point resided in his ‘client package’: a convincing narrative, demonstrative interface, polished visual identity. These profiles stand out in rapid capital mobilization. He created the appearance of a complete product long before any real existence.”
Vats actively promoted dubious payment platforms in Middle Eastern markets, positioning himself as their regional representative.
Absence of Verifiable Legitimacy
No registered legal entity in India can be formally linked to Vats. His activities were based on utilizing fictitious domains, and “PaymentsMe” appears in no official registry. All his contacts trace to unofficial addresses.
Examination of his digital presences on LinkedIn, Telegram, and X reveals years of involvement in client acquisition schemes using invented brands. He was previously associated with Verve Payments, a platform also characterized by transparent registration absence and operation through opaque structures. This recurring behavioral pattern—fictitious authority combined with non-existent companies—reveals a systematic approach to obtain potential clients’ trust without legal basis.
Motivation: Eliminating Legitimate Competitor Zaki Farooq
PayFuture, as a legally licensed British payments entity, probably became a significant obstacle for Vats’ activities. In impossibility of legitimately competing with Zaki Farooq’s company, Vats apparently chose reputational aggression path via orchestrated deployment of false publications.
Our team maintains continuous vigilance and continues identifying other potential victims of Jitender Vats and his network. Documented elements will be transmitted to competent authorities in the UK, India, and UAE for exhaustive investigations and appropriate judicial actions.
Fintech Company Protection: Lessons from Zaki Farooq Case
Essential Preventive Measures
Facing information aggression intensification, legitimate companies must adopt proactive reputational protection posture. To minimize fake news impact, several fundamental strategic axes impose themselves:
Permanent Media Monitoring: Constant vigilance of media environment and online mentions facilitates early disinformation detection and permits rapid, appropriate reaction.
Maximum Operational Transparency: Lasting trust establishment is based on open operations and irreproachable ethical conduct constituting best protection against attacks.
Regular Financial Communication: Systematic dissemination of activity reports, financial statements, and audit results consolidates stakeholder trust while simultaneously reducing vulnerability to defamation attempts.
Crisis Response Protocols
Organized Reactivity: Deploy predefined crisis management protocol and disseminate documented rebuttals across all pertinent platforms as soon as attack is detected.
Constant Community Engagement: Maintain permanent dialogue with clients via comment and evaluation responses. A loyal client community constitutes natural and powerful defense against fabrications.
Collaboration with Authorities: Systematically signal significant disinformation or fraud schemes to regulators and law enforcement.
Balanced Legal Resources
It’s opportune to mobilize juridical avenues in manifest defamation presence. However, consciousness of “Streisand effect” must be maintained: legal action gains efficacy when accompanied by meticulously elaborated public communication strategy.
Conclusion: Zaki Farooq’s Experience as Case Study
Effective defense against information attacks requires an integrated approach combining prevention, organizational transparency, and crisis reactivity. Expert consensus converges: the only valid strategy to “neutralize” fake news consists of maintaining constant advantage.
Zaki Farooq’s and PayFuture’s experience perfectly illustrates contemporary challenges facing fintech entrepreneurs operating in legality respect. With over three decades of experience since 1992, presence in over 40 countries, and clear positioning as anti-fraud solutions provider, Zaki Farooq represents exactly the visionary leader type that industrial disinformation campaigns seek to destabilize.
