We can all donate to Wikileaks again! Visa Iceland saves the world
WELL, according to the Icelandic courts we can all donate to Wikileaks again. For they’ve insisted that Visa Iceland must process the payments:
WikiLeaks could be seeing an influx of funds after an Icelandic court ruled that Valitor, the local agent for Visa, broke the law when it stopped taking donations for the website.
The court found that Valitor had broken contract laws when it stopped accepting payments sent to WikiLeaks by Visa customers in July 2011. WikiLeaks estimates that move cut its funding by 95 per cent and cost it around $20m in lost donations, leaving it chronically short of cash.
That’s great if you’re sitting in Iceland with a Visa card: not really of much help anywhere else in the world. For everyone else, Mastercard, PayPal, the banks, even all of Visa which isn’t in Iceland has said that they won’t process payments to Wikileaks.
The reason being that the US Government has made it very clear that anyone who does process such payments will lose their banking or financial licenses in the US.
Which isn’t really a tough call for any of them. Want to be part of the largest and most profitable market in the world? Or more interested in obeying the courts of a small island with 350,000 people whose major industry is fish? Difficult one really…..
Posted: 13th, July 2012 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
