Co-published with the Center for Media and Democracy
In the lead-up to a bankruptcy that wiped out ordinary investors, IronNet, a controversial cybersecurity tech startup financed by a board member with alleged ties to a Russian oligarch, paid former GOP Congressman Mike Rogers nearly $725,000, filings reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy indicate. Rogers—who is now in a tight Senate race in Michigan against Abdul El-Sayed—also received a six-figure secured promissory note from the company, giving him priority over other debtors, and he reported substantial capital gains from IronNet stock.
IronNet was founded in 2014 by former National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander to “revolutionize” institutional responses to cyberattacks.
Rogers, who served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee for four years, joined IronNet’s board immediately after retiring from the House in January 2015, according to his financial filings. The move paid off handsomely. Cashing in on the revolving door between Congress and the private sector earned Rogers almost $2 million from four tech and cybersecurity companies in 2022-2023 alone, according to Business Insider.
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During his eight-year tenure, Rogers helped oversee IronNet’s financial health as a member of the board’s Audit Committee. From August 27, 2021, when the company went public through a complex reverse merger transaction, through July 20, 2023, when Rogers stepped down from the board, the firm lost 99 percent of its stock value, going from $14 to $0.14 per share, according to Investing.com. An investor group sued, alleging that the company had inflated its revenue in order to drive its stock price higher; in September 2024, the bankrupt firm settled the lawsuit for $6.6 million.
IronNet had sought to capitalize on its deep relationships inside the U.S. national security state to win large contracts with the NSA, the U.S. Navy, the Kuwaiti government, and others, but was unable to do so. The firm’s principal attraction was Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director, a cybersecurity investing expert told the Associated Press, adding that its spectacular flameout was due to “hubris.”
IronNet invited Andre Pienaar, a South African private intelligence operative, to join its board in 2018, as his private equity firm, C5 Capital, made an initial investment of $35 million in the company—one that grew to $60 million by the time it went public, according to the AP. After IronNet went bankrupt in 2023, C5 and ITC Secure, another firm headed by Pienaar, have provided financing and acquired much of the bankrupt firm’s assets, merging ITC Secure and IronNet in February 2026 to found a new company known as Collective Defence, which he also chairs, according to his LinkedIn profile. C5 was also a major IronNet customer, with a contract for $5.2 million that a former IronNet executive told the AP was “inflated.”
The firm’s principal attraction was Keith Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director.
Pienaar, in turn, allegedly had a close association with the twice-sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, with documents obtained by the AP indicating that Pienaar sat on the board of a South African mine as a representative of Vekselberg. In addition, the AP reported that he helped the Kremlin-connected oligarch court London’s rich and famous, and interviewed former intelligence officials who believed that given his alleged ties to Vekselberg, Pienaar should have been prohibited from investing in IronNet.
According to AP, “the firm collapsed, in part, because it engaged in questionable business practices, produced subpar products and services, and entered into associations that could have left the firm vulnerable to meddling by the Kremlin.” One former vice president of IronNet told AP he was “ashamed” to have served on the firm’s board and that “the company’s top leaders cultivated a culture of deceit.”
Pienaar sued an AP reporter while the news outlet was covering him but dropped the case just before discovery was set to begin.
Rogers’s financial disclosures since 2023 paint a complex picture of his relationship with the bankrupt firm. Beyond the $724,887 in payments, his December 2023 filing shows a $250,000 to $500,000 promissory note from IronNet. In December 2022, when its finances were in free fall, IronNet issued $6.9 million in secured promissory notes with a 13.8 percent annual interest rate to its officers and directors, giving them priority in future bankruptcy payouts.
“Obviously they had taken care of themselves first and totally ignored all other shareholders in the entity,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen. “It appears as if IronNet was an entity set up by a handful of individuals for self-enrichment, and it served that … purpose at the expense of all other interests.”
As of July 2026, the promissory note no longer appears on Rogers’ financial statement, yet a court document from September 22, 2026, shows that Rogers remains a secured creditor of the bankrupt firm. The legal research database Stretto lists him as being owed $557,883, even though his Senate campaign disclosures for the past three years do not list it.
Rogers’ December 2023 financial disclosure also shows that he received between $100,000 and $1,000,000 in “capital gains” from stock holdings in IronNet that were by then nominal, presumably from the sale of IronNet stock prior to its bankruptcy. Bankruptcy typically renders company shares worthless.
“No doubt most investors in IronNet just lost a lot of money from the bankruptcy proceedings,” said Holman, the Public Citizen lobbyist.
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“But Rogers made a lot of money. [His] profiteering … does not seem to reflect normal business practices,” he said. “Instead, [it] reveals the extent of political opportunities IronNet and its key investors developed with having Rogers on board.”
If Rogers made sales prior to his departure from the board in July 2023, they would have triggered mandatory disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which he did not file. No one from his campaign responded to questions from the Center for Media and Democracy.
For his part, Pienaar denies having any association with Vekselberg, and his attorneys told the AP that regulatory filings from South Africa documenting his connection with the oligarch may be fake. President Trump, on the other hand, is less circumspect about his associations with the pro-Putin billionaire. In May, his administration approved a deal that will result in a $23 million payment to Vekselberg.
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