A Swiss banker who revealed details of client accounts via WikiLeaks was convicted Monday of violating the country s financial secrecy laws but won t have to serve time. Rudolf Elmer, a former employee of Julius Baer Group Ltd., was given a suspended fine of 16,800 Swiss francs ($19,397) under a system that allows Swiss courts to convert prison time into a financial penalty. The Zurich district court said that if Elmer commits a crime in the next three years, he may have to pay the fine.

Lawyers representing the credit card processor used by WikiLeaks are suing Visa and MasterCard in the United States over the 2010 banking blockade that kept the anti-secrecy group from receiving funds. On Monday this week, American attorneys for Icelandic hosting provider DataCell ehf filed suit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in hopes of having a federal judge award the company upwards of $5 million for what it claims was a coordinated attempt between Visa and MasterCard to restrict funding to WikiLeaks after the secret-spilling organization started publishing classified US State Department cables over four years ago.

Bharatiya Janata Party MPs will submit on Friday declarations to the presiding officers of their respective Houses of Parliament, stating that they do not have any illegal money stashed in any foreign bank or tax haven abroad.

WASHINGTON - Some internal Bank of America files obtained by WikiLeaks have been destroyed, according to a former close collaborator of Julian Assange, the whistleblowing website s founder. In an email to Reuters, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who last year was fired by Assange as WikiLeaks co-spokesman, confirmed that he had destroyed 'roundabout' 3,000 submissions WikiLeaks received related to Bank of America.

WASHINGTON - Some internal Bank of America files obtained by WikiLeaks have been destroyed, according to a former close collaborator of Julian Assange, the whistleblowing website s founder. In an email to Reuters, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who last year was fired by Assange as WikiLeaks co-spokesman, confirmed that he had destroyed 'roundabout' 3,000 submissions WikiLeaks received related to Bank of America.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost a financial lifeline. Since December, bans by the world's major credit card networks, it has been difficult for supporters of the controversial whistleblower to send him donations. But this week, WikiLeaks gained a brief respite with the unwitting help of an Icelandic bank.

WikiLeaks and Datacell (a service provider assisting WikiLeaks) are to sue Visa & MasterCard for engaging in an unlawful US-influenced financial blockade.