The Wall Street Journal reported on October 25 that WikiLeaks would shut down by year-end if financialservices companies did not lift restric- tions on donations that have hobbled the organization.
The website, which publishes leaked, sensitive documents, said it is temporarily suspending all publishing operations so that it can devote its resources to battling Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., eBay Inc.’s PayPal, Bank of America Corp. and other companies that have prohibited payments to the site since last December.
The last major WikiLeaks release, hundreds of thousands of U.S. government documents about Guantanamo Bay detainees, was in April.
“This financial blockade is an existential threat to WikiLeaks,” Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, said. “If the blockade is not torn down by the end of the year, the organization cannot continue its work.” He said the payment companies had bowed to political pressure from Washington and have prevented WikiLeaks financial contributors from supporting the cause of their choice.
Days after WikiLeaks began releasing a slew of confidential U.S. State Department cables last November, companies including PayPal, MasterCard and Visa prohibited users from making donations to the site. Those limits have stayed in place.
WikiLeaks filed a complaint with the European Commission’s antitrust authorities in July. Kristinn Hrafnsson, a WikiLeaks spokesman, said he expects European authorities to decide by mid-November whether to open a probe into the matter. He said WikiLeaks was planning legal action in various countries as well.
European antitrust authorities have received the complaint and are looking into the matter, a commission spokeswoman said. She didn’t say when a decision on whether to open a formal investigation was expected.
WikiLeaks’ finances long have been touchand-go. Since 2009, much of the organization’s funding has been donated in sums of about US$25 apiece through the Wau Holland Foundation, a German nonprofit organization established in memory of a computer hacker, which processes payments for WikiLeaks.
Bernd Fix, a Wau Holland Foundation board member, estimated that WikiLeaks’revenue has dropped 95% as a result of the restrictions. He estimated that the foundation will receive about €70,000, or roughly US$95,000, in donations to WikiLeaks by year-end, compared with the roughly €1.4 million received last year.
In a statement last December, PayPal General Counsel John Muller said the account tied to WikiLeaks had been suspended because PayPal’s acceptable-use policy prevents an organization from using the service if “it encourages, promotes, facilitates or instructs others to engage in illegal activity.” Mr. Muller said political considerations didn’t factor into PayPal’s decision.
“Ultimately, our difficult decision was based on a belief that the WikiLeaks website was encouraging sources to release classified material, which is likely a violation of law by the source,” Mr. Muller said. PayPal declined further comment.
Mr. Assange said that WikiLeaks hadn’t done anything illegal, noting that there were “no judgments or even charges” against WikiLeaks or its staff anywhere in the world.
Visa Europe said the credit-card company reserves the right to suspend payments when a merchant doesn’t abide by local laws or Visa’s operating regulations. A spokeswoman said Visa doesn’t share details of its investigations.
Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks needs US$3.5 million in the next 12 months if it wants to operate at a similar level to recent months.
Though WikiLeaks has been denied access to many conventional payment methods, the site can still receive money via traditional checks, cash payments and transfers through companies such as MoneyGram International Inc. that haven’t banned WikiLeaks donations.
Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks also is turning to other payment methods, such as mobile banking. And he said that direct bank-to-bank money transfers to WikiLeaks remain possible in most countries. But he said anyone using the Bank of America network can’t transfer payments to WikiLeaks.
Mr. Assange is living under legal restrictions on an estate in rural England, awaiting a U.K. court’s decision on whether to extradite him to Sweden for questioning in a sexualmisconduct case. He has denied wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged.
Mr. Assange said that money donated to WikiLeaks won’t go toward defending him in the British or Swedish cases. For those cases, he has established a separate legal defense fund, which he said hasn’t been restricted by PayPal. Mr. Assange also said WikiLeaks plans in late November to unveil a secure way for the public to submit leaked documents.