New Disclosures About The United States On Wikileaks
The United States threatened Germany or used their influence on Russia on behalf of MasterCard and Visa. These are just a few of the new disclosures made by Wikileaks about the US foreign policy, the famous site having published new American diplomatic cables. Among the new information leaked to the public: Shell controls the Nigerian government, China holds the secret of quantum teleporation or Saudi princes throw parties involving drugs, sex and alchool.
According to the diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks, the US government has lobbied in Russia for two American credit card companies, Visa and MasterCard. Exactelly the two companies that recently decided to close Wikileaksʼ accounts, arguing that its activities were illegal. The cable was sent on February the 1st 2010 by the American Embassy in Moscow and it suggests the fact that the United States were concerned about Russiaʼs intent to implement a new payment system through credit cards. The new system would have caused losses of billions of dollars to the two American companies, losses resulting from the processing fee.
The Russian officials thought about implementing the new system due to the security services, who believed that the information obtained by Visa and Mastercard payments about the Russian citizens would end up at the American authorities and the US secret services. While the new system would have been controlled by the Russian banks owned by the state, these banks being the ones who would have processed all the payments made through credit cards.
The telegram shows that the United States authorities considered that the system would bring a disadvantage to the American business. This project would bring a disadvantage to the US market leaders Visa and Mastercard, whether they enter the system or not. Fees for these services were estimated at four billion dollars annually, according to the cable published by Wikileaks.
And, according to another classified document leaked on the Internet, the United States pressured Germany in order to protect its CIA agents that had arrested a German citizen by mistake, instead of a suspect terrorist having the same name. More exactely, the American authorities wanted Germany not to enforce the arrest warrants issued against the CIA agents involved in the kidnapping of the German citizen.
John M. Koenig, the American deputy chief of mission in Berlin, warned the European country that it should carefully weigh, step by step, the way the case of the officers who have kidnapped Khaled el-Masari would influence the relations betweent the two countries. Khaled el-Masari was a Lebanese born German citizen, who was confused with an al-Qaeda member who had the same name. The CIA agents kidnapped him while he was on vacation in Macedonia. The agents took him to a secret location and even tortured him.
The diplomatic cables suggest that the German opposition politicians feared that the thirteen CIA agents involved in the case had not been arrested because of the US pressure. The American emabssy in Berlin transmitted to the State Department that the US dimplomats continued to underline to their German counterparts the potential negative implications for the relations between the two countries, especially those related to counterterrorism cooperation, if measures to to arrest or extradite US officials or citizens would be taken.
The US officials were also interested that no details about the case to be made public. And a note of the American diplomacy showed that even the German government was aware of the situation, but, because of the pressure from Parliament and the public opinion, the case was not a simple one.
