Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, has made the decision to close the bank account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. This was one of the main ways Assange took contributions to fund the secret document posting site. According to the AP, Postfinance investigated the claims Assange made when opening the account, namely that he was a Swiss resident. They found that he provided no evidence of that, and closed the account.
Assange will get the cash from that account, but this further reduces Assange’s options for fundraising after PayPal cut ties with the organization. WikiLeaks is also still under attack online as groups attempt to knock the site offline. They were forced to move to a Swiss host last week and adopt a new domain name, WikiLeaks.ch.
As various services flee, others are seemingly happy to have WikiLeaks around. Both Facebook and Twitter have allowed WikiLeaks to stick around. Perhaps the dividing line that of financial ties. A business may feel very wary about taking money from an organization so openly despised by the US administration. What do you think WikiLeaks’ next step will be?
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