The secret list of names that Reuters spent USD 530 mn to acquire: Thomson Reuters’ World Check service — a database of 2.7 mn names used primarily by banks to assess risk, built solely on publicly available information and bought by Reuters in 2011 for what is believed to be USD 530 mn — has come under criticism in the press in recent months for being relatively unregulated and for wielding an outsized impact on banks accepting the labels assigned to people on the list. Among the individuals slapped with a ‘terrorism’ warning label: “Former World Bank and Bank of England advisor Mohamed Iqbal Asaria, who was given a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) award in the 2005 Queen’s Honours List for services to international development,” who later told VICE News with regard to World Check: “It makes me more than worried. If this is what the banks have at best, they’re not looking at something serious here.” (Read VICE News reveals the terrorism blacklist secretly wielding power over the lives of mns, February 2016)