WikiLeaks opens new gateway for donations

WikiLeaks has announced a new path for donations through a French credit card system Carte Bleue to find a way out of the US-backed financial blockade slapped by leading financial institutions.

Western financial institutions, including VISA, MasterCard and Western Union have choked the revenues of the world’s leading whistle-blowing organisation.

In a statement yesterday on the WikiLeaks Website, founder Mr Julian Assange said: “We beat them in Iceland and, by God, we’ll beat them in France as well. Let them shut it down.

Let them demonstrate to the world once again their corrupt pandering to Washington. We’re waiting. Our lawyers are waiting. The whole world is waiting. Do it.”

WikiLeaks appealed “all global supporters to make use of this avenue immediately before VISA/MasterCard attempts to shut it down.”

The statement said that after WikiLeaks published US diplomatic correspondence, US financial institutions “erected a banking blockade against WikiLeaks wholly outside of any judicial or administrative process.”

The blockade resulted in 95 per cent donations being chocked, with the whistle-blowing Website’s income dropped to 21 per cent of its operating costs.

“The French credit card system, Carte Bleue, is coupled with the VISA/MasterCard system globally. VISA and MasterCard are contractually barred from directly cutting off merchants through the Carte Bleue system. The French non-profit FDNN (Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality-Fonds de Dnse de la Net Neutralithas set up a Carte Bleue fund for WikiLeaks,” the statement said.