WikiLeaks Had Some Snarky Tweets About the Panama Papers

WikiLeaks Blasts Panama Papers Journalists On Twitter

The pro-government transparency activists at WikiLeaks have been critical of the decision to curate the massive Panama Papers data leak instead of creating a publicly searchable database.

Over Twitter, they took the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to task for allegedly shrugging their journalistic integrity in favor of their funders. The ICIJ, who have been pouring through the documents with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, says they want to release the information slowly so as not to compromise anyone’s safety.

WikiLeaks, however, contents they may be compromised by funding from the U.S. Government and billionaire George Soros.

#PanamaPapers: If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 6, 2016

Ouch.

Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge "ICIJ" has a WikiLeaks problem #PanamaPapers https://t.co/xEXlmGg0fG

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 5, 2016

#PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros. pic.twitter.com/tgeKfLuROn

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 5, 2016

They then clarified their tweets in a series of follow-ups:

The US OCCRP can do good work, but for the US govt to directly fund the #PanamaPapers attack on Putin seriously undermines its integrity.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 5, 2016

US govt funded #PanamaPapers attack story on Putin via USAID. Some good journalists but no model for integrity. pic.twitter.com/5MnZbB6Zwz

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 6, 2016

WikiLeak’s concerns are valid. However, they may be inadvertently creating a conspiracy theory about U.S. involvement in the leaks. Russia Today, which is funded by the Russian government, seized on the tweets and ran the headline US government, Soros funded Panama Papers to attack Putin – WikiLeaks.

Also read: Why Twitter Users Are Saying, ‘Hey Snowden, I <3 Catfacts’

They quote German journalist Ernst Wolff as saying:

“The American government is pursuing a policy of destabilization all over the world, and this [leak] also serves this purpose of destabilization. They are causing a lot of people all over the world and also a lot of money to find its way into the [new] tax havens in America. The US is preparing for a super big financial crisis, and they want all that money in their own vaults and not in the vaults of other countries.”

There is, however, no evidence corroborating this claim.

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