February 28th, 2008
Wikileaks responds to Baer on judge's shut-down order
Wikileaks sent out this reponse to Baer’s press release on the shut-down.
Baer alleges that they couldn’t negotiate with Wikileaks. This is a lie.
Wikileaks at all times responded with grace and dignity to BJBs
highly irregular demands and left communication open. A full record
of the correspondence is available on http://Wikileaks.be/ The last
letter is from Wikileaks. BJB did not submit the correspondence to
the court, although it must be absolutely central to the issues
held there. We wonder why?Wikileaks is happy to let the public decide, but the shadowy
Swiss-Cayman “Bank and Trust” has been allergic to the sun from the
very beginning. The first sign of its hyper-sensitivity was when
its Hollywood lawyers, Lavely & Singer refused to put their demands
in writing — even email — as requested. The second sign was when
the same lawyers refused to even identify their client! Finally the
lawyers refused to even state what city they would be taking their
threatened action in so Wikileaks could arrange representation in
that city, instead preferring to abuse process and arrange a hearing
where Wikileaks was not represented. But don’t take our word for
it — see submissions to the court by our then pre-litigation council
Julie Turner and the correspondence between Wikileaks and the bank
on http://wikileaks.be/It is clear BJB decided to hire Hollywood lawyers Lavely & Singer
who abused process and it is now paying the consequences. Wikileaks
demands an apology.Nearly all of the documents at issue are over 10 years old with the
most recent document being from 2003. BJB claims in its court filings
to have been aware of their release since 2003 and the Swiss media
had the documents in 2005. The documents are nearly all trust
arrangements setting up anonymizing shell structures. The only
relevance these documents have now is that they expose who was
funneling money through the Cayman Islands trusts a decade ago.BJB stated in its Business-wire press release that “It wasn’t our
intention to shut down the Web site”. This is a lie. The requests
to the court to do just that are a matter of public record. Further,
at any time, including now, BJB could have asked the court that its
earlier request for an order to shutdown the site be rescinded. It
has not done so. While one might be tempted to blame Hollywood
lawyers run amuck, BJB continues to employ the same law-firm, which
can only be an endorsement of it its ruinous behavior.Until attacked by the bank Wikileaks took a skeptical position on
the documents. BJB in attempting to shoot the messenger has only
succeeded, spectacularly, in shooting itself.
