ERAM – The Scope is receiving reports that Zainou Biotech scientist Hilen Tukoss has fled his home station in Otosela and defected to the Minmatar Republic alongside almost two hundred and fifty other research staff.

Although these reports remain unconfirmed, locator agents place Tukoss in Eram, Metropolis, at the Eifyr & Co. Biotech production plant. Both Tukoss and Eifyr & Co. representatives have refused invitations from Scope reporters to comment on the rising speculation.

On condition of anonymity, a civilian trader who works in the area reported seeing a large fleet of capsuleers escorting a freighter through Uemon, followed by a “heated exchange” over local comms between members of the capsuleer fleet and a member of Ishukone Watch.

This information corroborates another anonymous report, this time from a Republic customs official, who claimed to have scanned a freighter arriving in the system of Eram with almost 250 Caldari civilians aboard.

Ishukone has issued a press release which summarily refuses to discuss matters of internal corporate security, a policy the company has maintained throughout the last several dozen years.

Little is known about the research agenda of Hilen Tukoss, Program Director of the Otosela Neuropsychology Center. The nature of his work, as with much of Zainou’s top research projects, remains a tightly guarded secret.