Swiss Bank, CA Court Censor Whistleblower Website - Wikileaks investigation into Cayman money laundering results in U.S. blockade

A California judge last week ordered domain registrar Dynadot to remove the domain wikileaks.org from the Internet. The website exposed asset hiding, money laundering, and tax evasion by posting confidential documents and public commentary. The site also recently leaked documents related to prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

Most recently, the website leaked documents from a whistleblower that suggested that The Julius Baer Bank, a Swiss bank with a division in the Cayman Islands, was engaged in helping its customers hide assets and wash funds. The bank responded by targeting the website's host (Dynadot), and not only managed to get them taken offline, but also managed to prevent the site from changing hosts.

The owners of the website have setup several mirror servers around the globe, most of which are being hammered at the moment as the story gains traction. The website notes that U.S. now joins China and Thailand as the only countries where the website has been censored:

When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret censorship lists of Thailand's military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which states "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press", the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown.

The group says it will now ramp up its efforts to expose illegal or unethical banking practices. The group says they have six pro-bono attorneys trying to handle the assault in San Francisco.