At a stage where governments around the world have tried to hide away from the embarrassment caused by WikiLeaks expose on black money, the founder of secret-spilling organisation Julian Assange has said that the future leaks might include names of the Indians as well. He was speaking to Times Now’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami about Leaks possible disclosures on the Swiss bank data.
He appealed to the Indians to absolutely not lose hope as the names of those with secret Swiss accounts would come out at any point in the future. Hinting that Wikileaks might work with specialised agencies before releasing the Swiss bank data, he observed that the Indian government was not as aggressive as the German in going after the list of Indian account holders. In fact, he said that India should be more aggressive because India might be losing more per capita tax money than Germany.
This is the first time Assange has spoken about Indian accounts in Swiss banks, and comes at a time when the debate in India over Swiss Bank accounts has sharpened. To a question he said, “We have various types of information about different banking operations in the world. Over time, we have revealed those. In fact, most of the legal attacks on us have been from banks Banks in Scotland…banks in Dubai…banks in Iceland. We all received legal attacks from these banks. And we will continue publishing data on these banks as soon as we are able to do so.”
He added, “There are Indian names in the data we have already published or going to publish. I can’t remember specifically whether there are Indian names in the upcoming publication. But I have read Indian names. Similarly, in these private Swiss banking concerns, where you need at least a million dollars…which is a significant amount of money…Not an average Indian,” he said.
To another question Julian Assange said, “I can’t tell you anything more at this stage. As we go through the process of releasing data, as always we have to do extra research. And once we understand which media organisations are best placed to help us with that research, then we operate with them. But we are not at that stage yet that I know all the research that is going on.”
