This just in. The New York Times reports that B of A is refusing to process payments to Wikileaks:
Bank of America Corp said on Saturday it will not process payments intended for WikiLeaks, which has angered U.S. authorities with the mass release of U.S. diplomatic cables.
The largest U.S. bank by assets joins a growing group of financial services companies, including MasterCard, PayPal and Visa Europe, that are restricting payments to the global organization which has said its next large document release will be bank information.
"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the bank said in a statement obtained by Reuters.
WikiLeaks has said it will release documents early next year that will point to "unethical practices" at a major U.S. bank, widely thought to be Bank of America.
Does this make sense? Of course, it does. Wikileaks threatened to release bank information-- I can only imagine what that might contain-- so B of A has decided to get out front on this and cut off funds to Wikileaks.
Meanwhile, Wikileaks via Twitter has responded:
WikiLeaks later issued a message on Twitter urging its supporters to leave the bank.
"We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America," it said on the social networking medium.
"Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advice is to place your funds somewhere safer," WikiLeaks said in a subsequent tweet.
Nice. The struggle between Wiki and those whose information is being revealed continues.
According to The Guardian,
Assange told Forbes magazine last month that the data [about the banks] would show "unethical practices".
According to AP, bank officials aren't going to explain their decision in any additional detail:
Reached by phone, Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri declined further comment to The Associated Press on Saturday.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post had an explanation yesterday of why this would happen at this moment:
In an interview with CNBC on Friday, Julian Assange said his organization plans to release information about banks some time in January.
The WikiLeaks founder did not say which firms would face leaks or what type of data or information that would entail. But in recent weeks, speculation has swirled that Bank of America is the prime target. Those assumptions are largely based on an October 2009 interview that Assange gave to Computer World, in which he said, "At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives," he said. "Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem."
Assange also said Friday that his organization "has been attacked" by banks in the United States, United Kingdom, Dubai and Switzerland. It was unclear what type of alleged attacks he was referring to.
And The New York Times is reporting this about B of A:
The attorneys general of Arizona and Nevada on Friday filed a lawsuit against Bank of America, accusing it of engaging in “widespread fraud” by misleading customers with “false promises” about their eligibility for modifications on their home mortgages.
In withering complaints filed in state courts in both states, the attorneys general accused Bank of America of assuring customers that they would not be foreclosed upon while they were seeking loan modifications, only to proceed with foreclosures anyway; of falsely telling customers that they must be in default to obtain a modification; of promising that the modifications would be made permanent if they completed a trial period, only to renege on the deal; and of conjuring up bogus reasons for denying modifications.
“Bank of America’s callous disregard for providing timely, correct information to people in their time of need is truly egregious,” Catherine Cortez Masto, the attorney general of Nevada said in a statement....
The lawsuit comes as top prosecutors nationwide are investigating whether the paperwork that banks used to support foreclosure cases often was egregiously sloppy, sometimes relying on robo-signers — employees who signed hundreds of documents a day — to sign sworn court documents.
Does Wikileaks have information about this part of B of A's business?i Is that what B of A is trying to suppress?