WikiLeaks may have withheld emails that implicated the Russian government in a transference of €2 billion out of Syria in 2011, according to a new report.
The organization in 2012 published a trove of documents known as “The Syria Files,” which included more two million emails from Syrian officials obtained by RevoluSec, a branch of the international hacking collective Anonymous.
According to a Friday report by the Daily Dot, WikiLeaks might have excluded an email that showed the head of Syria’s Central Bank seeking to deposit funds in Russia’s VTB Bank amid domestic upheaval and international sanctions being imposed upon the country.
The Oct. 26, 2011, message was authored by Salim Toubaji and sent to Sergey Avakov, a managing director at VTB Bank. “Please be informed that following your good bank’s proposals … we have raised the total amount of deposits up to more than EUR 2 bln,” Toubaji wrote. “Please note that the matter of extending the terms of the Central Bank of Syria existing deposits at the moment remains under consideration.”
Toubaji requested that the funds be converted to Russian currency. “We kindly ask you to open an account in Russian rubles in the name of our bank or provide us with your instructions on the actions that we should take in order to open such an account.”
VTB Bank is backed by the Central Bank of Russia, though that is not unusual. The Central Bank also holds a majority stake in Sberbank, the country’s largest commercial financial institution.
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The allegation could bolster suspicions that WikiLeaks is favorable to the Kremlin in its document leaks. The organization has come under fire for leaking information from the Democratic National Committee after it was revealed that Russian hackers breached the party’s network.
WikiLeaks denied withholding information, and accused the Daily Dot of working to help Hillary Clinton. “The release includes many emails referencing Syrian-Russian relations,” WikiLeaks said. “As a matter of long standing policy we do not comment on claimed sources. It is disappointing to see Daily Dot pushing the Hillary Clinton campaign’s neo-McCarthyist conspiracy theories about critical media.”
The Daily Dot reportedly found the information included in 500 pages of sealed Manhattan court records provided by an anonymous source. Those records appear to have originated with FBI files obtained from two informants, including one hacker for another Anonymous-affiliated group, “LulzSec,” and a former staffer for WikiLeaks.
