Moneybookers fears US government and shuts down WikiLeaks’ account

WikiLeaks, an international organization that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources, reported that it has had its funding blocked by the prominent UK payment processor Moneybookers on request of the US government who started the war against the whistleblower.

When asked by WikiLeaks about the explanation Moneybookers responded that it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

Meantime, as reported by the Guardian the blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army's biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.

Apart from these when required by Pentagon to return the war logs and destroy all copies WikiLeaks said it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.

Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: "We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer." Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: "We stick with our original statement."