Indian Swiss account details may be out next year: Assange

The names of Indians holding Swiss bank accounts may be revealed by Wikileaks sometime next year, its founder Julian Assange said on Saturday.

Assange, who is under house arrest in the UK, said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit through video-conferencing, that whistle-blower Rudolf Elmer, who passed CDs containing information to him, is undergoing trial and it would not be proper to make disclosures at this juncture.

Asked if names of Indians holding Swiss accounts will be revealed in the coming year, he said, ‘yes’.

Information about such accounts ‘which will affect India’ will be revealed in the coming year, he said. He said since Elmer was jailed and facing legal action, he would not like to comment on the issue at the moment.

"For that reason, unfortunately I cannot speak about information related to Swiss accounts in great detail...we must protect our people," he added.

The Australian whistle-blower said governments in some countries are ‘sucking out’ data from e-mails and internet transactions and passing on this ‘economic intelligence’ to companies like Walmart. He made some startling revelations about ‘hacking’ and ‘hijacking’ of data of unsuspecting people.

Assange maintained that NTRO, which he termed was India's equivalent of National Security Agency of the US, was engaged in similar kind of surveillance under the cover of keeping track of ‘Islamic terror’.

However, there were no known instances of NTRO sharing such information with private companies. Assange said e-mails, transactions done through credit and debit cards as well as information sent on the internet, ‘go through the Pacific (Ocean) and US’ and are intercepted in the name of national security and to combat terrorist threats.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/110994" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-0595ab0cf064b3a325e21fe0d924b3f7" value="form-0595ab0cf064b3a325e21fe0d924b3f7" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80064846" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.