Esther Addley and Jason Deans
Guardian
October 24, 2011
Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, has announced that the whistleblowing website is suspending publishing operations in order to focus on fighting a financial blockade and raise new funds.
Assange, speaking at a press conference in London on Monday, said a banking blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks’ revenues.
He added that the blockade posed an existential threat to WikiLeaks and if it was not lifted by the new year the organisation would be “simply not able to continue”.
The website, behind the publication of hundreds of thousands of controversial US embassy cables in late 2010 in partnership with newspapers including the Guardian and New York Times, revealed that it was running on cash reserves after “an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade” by the Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union.
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