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Free Press--Bah Humbug.

By Rob Lambert - Email Editor

Date : 21-Feb-2008

This newsletter contains information possibly more relevant to making good conversation at your next cocktail party than protecting yourself; however, I think it is important.

Now, here is the cocktail party fodder:

A Federal Judge in California just issued an order attempting to close down wikileaks.org, a website designed to let whistleblowers publish sensitive documents. Here are the facts in a nutshell.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in California, in an injunction dated last Friday, ordered the shutdown of the website known as Wikileaks.org.

The judge ruled in favor of Swiss-based Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. and its Cayman Islands subsidiary Julius Baer Bank & Trust.

Judge White ordered the California web hosting company Dynadot to "immediately clear and remove" records from Wikileaks and "prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank page…" This was a permanent, not a temporary, injunction.

The site allegedly contained documents implicating this grand old Swiss banking powerhouse in money laundering and tax fraud. I have no idea if this is true. Over the years I have had significant relationships with this bank and they have all been at the highest level. All parties, including he bankers, were as professional as can be. In short, in my experience, this bank is tops.

With that said, what is going on in the USA when a Swiss bank can get a Federal Judge to shut down a web site.

Here is my guess on what will happen.

With respect to wikileaks.com: This little known site will remain visible and become famous. You can visit it now by clicking here or on the numerous back-up sites such as this one. (Remember, this site was started by Chinese dissidents who were worried about government censorship).

With respect to Judge White: He will always be known, long after people have forgotten his name, as “The Bush appointee with a political agenda who stepped all over the First Amendment.”

With respect to Bank Julius Baer: Millions of people who have never ever heard of this bank will now think of it as a front for money laundering and tax evasion just because they fought so hard to shut down a site with allegedly incriminating information on it. If this grand old dame of banks had just fought this battle fair and square, the only people to hear of this dispute would have been the few thousand financial analysts and foreign bank types who normally take these allegations with a grain of salt (as I do). It is almost like the recording industry suing the kids who download free music. Julius Baer appears guilty whether or not there is anything to these allegations.

I will keep you up to date as this plays out.

Well, that’s good enough material for a few minutes of conversation at your next cocktail party.

Have a healthy and protected week.

Rob Lambert

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