Swedish Pirate Party Presses Charges Against Banks For WikiLeaks Blockade

davecb writes "Rick Falkvinge reports today that the Swedish Pirate Party has laid charges against at least Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal before the Finansinspektionen for refusing to pass on money owed to WikiLeaks. The overseer of bank licenses notes (in translation) that 'The law states, that if there aren't legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed.'"

Re:Sweden doesn't have a judiciary?

[aliquis]

What? It's not like the pirate party decide the outcome.

What they have done is of course to ask Finansinspektionen to investigate it and is the organization which look after the financial markets in Sweden. I assume the actual charges will go from someone with the authority to do so. Not from the Pirate party.

Re:Excellent.

[Fluffeh]

In case anyone else was wondering what Finansinspektionen was, the following is taken from wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

Finansinspektionen (FI; Financial Supervisory Authority in English) is the Swedish government agency responsible for financial regulation in Sweden. It is responsible for the oversight, regulation and authorisation of financial markets and their participants. The agency falls under the Swedish Ministry of Finance and regulates all organisations that provide financial services in Sweden.

Re:Excellent.

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to seeing Paypal get a taste of having to follow rules.

Sorry, but as a swede I can safely say that "Finansinspektionen" has no real teeth. They will not do anything about this. Too bad though.

Hope I am proven wrong.

Re:Excellent.

[rolfwind]

Aren't there any equivalent US laws? Or is no one in US interested in prosecuting?

Who do you think pushed to get Wikileaks payments blocked? The US Government.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11945875 [bbc.co.uk]

Re:Excellent.

[dkleinsc]

Place blame on exactly who's shoulders it belongs:
- Barack Obama (D) made it national policy to aggressively prosecute whistleblowers of all stripes (including Bradley Manning), and proudly supported the effort to cut off funding of Wikileaks despite the demonstrable fact that the organization has not been convicted or blamed for any crimes in any court of law.
- Joe Lieberman (I) did the actual organizing of all the payment processors to cut off payments.
- Lest you think this was all the Democrats' idea, Mitch McConnell, Dick Cheney, and quite a few other prominent Republicans fully supported these moves. Probably because it made their guys look bad too.

Make no mistake about it: There was absolutely nothing legal about what the US government did to Wikileaks, but there was little to no opposition within the government. Julian Assange had a point during his extradition trial when he argued that the United States could not be trusted to follow its own laws. The trouble, of course, was that the UK and Sweden were happy to bend over when the US asked them to, and it was Ecuador with the cajones to stand up to them.

Re:Excellent.

[cdrudge]

Who wants to bet that Visa and Mastercard will follow the telecoms into getting retroactive immunity?

I may be wrong, but I don't think Congress can grant retroactive immunity for a corporation's operation in another country. They may grant immunity for US operations, but if they chose to operate in a foreign country they are subject to that foreign country's laws.

Potentially this could put Paypal, Visa, and MasterCard between a rock and a hard place.