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WIKILEAKS

Swedish banks reported for WikiLeaks blockade

Sweden's Pirate Party has filed a complaint with the country's financial system watchdog alleging Swedish banks have been complicit in a long-running blockade of donations to WikiLeaks.

Published: 18 December 2012 07:49 CET
Swedish banks reported for WikiLeaks blockade

According to the complaint, filed on Monday with Sweden’s Finansinspektionen (FI), banks in Sweden have broken the law by denying Swedes the ability to make donations to the whistle blower website.

“The blockade is a serious threat to freedom of speech and expression,” Erik Lönroth of the Pirate Party said in a statement.

“It shouldn’t be up to a specific payment service to decide what sort of activities are appropriate and deserve the ability to receive financial support.”

Starting in December 2010, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and other payment service providers stopped processing payments to WikiLeaks, making it difficult for would-be donors to support the whistleblower website.

WikiLeaks claims it has lost 95 percent of its revenue due to the blockade.

The Pirate Party complaint alleges that since banks in Sweden utilize the payment services behind the WikiLeaks blockade, they are breaking Swedish laws by denying Swedes the ability to donate to WikiLeaks.

According to the Pirate Party, Sweden’s banks are “actively participating in blocking transactions without a legitimate reason”.

“It’s frightening that we’re all forced to live by the morals of the American Bible Belt by the companies that handle our payments,” Pirate Party head Anna Troberg said in a statement.

“These companies happily deliver funds to the Ku Klux Klan, but not to WikiLeaks and other companies they view as immoral.”

As the banks singled out by the Pirate Party – Danske Bank in Sweden, Swedbank, Handelsbanken, Nordea, and SEB – all fall under the purview of Finansinspektionen, the party hopes the agency will take action to probe whether the banks are in violation of the law by failing to carry out transactions on behalf of their customers.

Speaking with the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper, the head of Finansinspektionens payments division, Johan Terfelt, confirmed the agency had received the complaint and would assess whether there was reason to act.

“The law says that if there aren’t legal grounds for denying a payment, it should be carried out,” he said.

Examples of legal grounds included being unable to identify the recipient of the payment or if there are reasons to suspect the money may go to finance terrorism.

However, Terfelt refused to elaborate on exactly what responsibility Swedish banks had when a payment service provider like Visa orMastercard decides to block payments.

The Local/dl

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WIKILEAKS

German MPs protest Assange’s arrest outside London prison

Two far-left German MPs, Heike Hansel and Sevim Dagdelen of Die Linke had been due to meet their "friend" Assange in London's Ecuadoran embassy later on Monday. But they were in for a surprise.

Published: 15 April 2019 16:17 CEST
German MPs protest Assange's arrest outside London prison
Sevim Dagdelen (Die Linke) standing outside of Belmarsh prison on Monday. Photo: DPA

Instead, following his expulsion and arrest last week, they protested outside the top-security Belmarsh prison in southeast London where he is being held, carrying placards demanding his release.

The WikiLeaks founder is in custody awaiting sentencing for breaching his British bail conditions in 2012 by seeking refuge in Ecuador's London embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden.

SEE ALSO: German MP visits Assange in embassy

He was arrested at the embassy on Thursday after Ecuador revoked his asylum, and is now also fighting a US extradition warrant relating to the release by WikiLeaks of a huge cache of official documents.

The US indictment charges Assange with “conspiracy” for working with former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password stored on Department of Defence computers in March 2010.

EU 'must take action'

Dagdelen urged Britain and the EU to block any extradition request.

“We call on the British government not to extradite Julian Assange to the USA.

“The European Union must take action to protect a politically-persecuted publisher and journalist,” said the German politician, calling on Spain and her home country to grant Assange asylum.

SEE ALSO: Assange: US marine spied on me in Berlin

Dagdelen said they were trying to see Assange in prison, but their application was “still pending”.

“I'm a friend of Julian Assange. He's a son, a father, a brother and a good friend,” said Dagdelen.

“His whole life he sacrificed for the truth.”

They also accused the Ecuadoran government of “engaging in a disinformation and slander campaign against Assange” after a series of reports emerged detailing his increasingly disfunctional relationship with embassy staff.

Belmarsh has frequently been used in high-profile national security cases, including that of former Finsbury Park Mosque hate preacher Abu Hamza, who now resides in a US “supermax” prison following extradition.

Radical cleric Anjem Choudary, who was convicted in 2016 of encouraging support for the Islamic State group, spent some of his sentence there.

Belmarsh earned the moniker “the UK's Guantanamo Bay” in the period following the 9/11 attacks after it was used to detain a number of people under anti-terror laws.

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