English Story

维基泄密创始人银行帐户被冻结

The Swiss post office's bank, PostFinance, has frozen the accounts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

瑞士邮政银行——邮政金融已经冻结了维基泄密创始人朱利安·阿桑杰的帐户。

Wikileaks has moved its website to a Swiss host
Wikileaks has moved its website to a Swiss host
The whistle-blowing(告密,揭发内幕) website says the freeze includes a defence fund and personal assets worth 31,000 euros.

Wikileaks has published hundreds of secret US diplomatic cables, angering the US government and triggering moves by several companies including PayPal and Amazon to end their services.

Meanwhile, a warrant for Mr Assange's arrest has reached the UK authorities.

Sources have told the BBC that the European Arrest Warrant for Mr Assange arrived on Monday afternoon.

Swedish prosecutors want to question Mr Assange in connection with allegations of rape, sexual molestation(干扰,妨害) and unlawful coercion(强制,强迫) , which he denies.

He is believed to be in hiding somewhere in south-east England. Once the police have located him, he would be expected to appear at a magistrate(地方法官) 's court within 24 hours, pending extradition(引渡) to Sweden, says the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner.

Mr Assange's UK lawyer, Mark Stephens, told the BBC: "We are in the process of making arrangements to meet with the police by consent in order to facilitate the taking of the question and answer that is needed."
Setbacks for Wikileaks

Sweden first issued an arrest warrant for Mr Assange on 18 November but it was invalidated by a procedural error. A new warrant was issued on 2 December.

The move by Switzerland's PostFinance to freeze the Wikileaks accounts is the latest setback to hit the whistle-blowing website since it began publishing the US cables last week.

In a statement on its website, PostFinance said Mr Assange had "provided false information regarding his place of residence" during the account opening process.

"(Mr) Assange entered Geneva as his domicile(住宅) . Upon inspection, this information was found to be incorrect.

"(Mr) Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance. For this reason, PostFinance is entitled to close his account."

For its part, a Wikileaks statement says it and Mr Assange have lost 100,000 euros in assets in a week.

"Late last week, the internet payment giant PayPal froze 60,000 euros of donations to the German charity the Wau Holland Foundation, which were targeted to promote the sharing of knowledge via Wikileaks," Wikileaks said in a statement.