In December 2010, PayPal suspended WikiLeaks’ account after receiving a letter from the U.S. State Department characterizing the organization’s activities as illegal in the United States. Mastercard and Visa Europe also stopped processing WikiLeaks donations, while Amazon, Bank of America, and Swiss bank PostFinance had already ended their relationships with the publisher. Datacell, the IT company that enabled card donations, said Visa’s decision resulted from political pressure; WikiLeaks described the coordinated withdrawals as a “banking blockade.”
The companies’ actions followed WikiLeaks’ publication of U.S. diplomatic cables and military records, but the supplied account does not establish a court finding that the payment companies acted unlawfully or that the State Department directly ordered them to terminate services. The cutoff disrupted WikiLeaks’ funding and forced it to rely on alternative donation arrangements, including the Wau Holland Foundation, while cyberattacks by the unaffiliated hacktivist group Anonymous targeted several companies and the Swedish Prosecution Authority. WikiLeaks’ ability to publish and accept donations remained constrained, contributing to repeated changes of hosting infrastructure and later operational decline.
