Julian Assange was asked to present at the European Parliament S&D party seminar on Corruption in member states of the European Union. Bivol made a presentation in this seminar entitled Government Level Corruption and Ties to Organized Crime. Julian Assange spoke as part of this presentation on the wider corruption revealed in Cablegate, and legal cases that have used the cables as evidence.
I'd like to thank our Bulgarian partner Bivol for their courage and meticulous research over the last two years on many important corruption stories. It has been reported by others, but let me say it again, the work of Bivol is impressive and a model to be followed.
Since WikiLeaks was founded in 2007 we have exposed thousands of cases of corruption. But before looking at the specifics I want us to fly up into the sky for a moment to look down on where we are.
The Oxford English dictionary definition of corruption is:
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dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery: the journalist who wants to expose corruption in high places
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the action or effect of making someone or something morally depraved
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the process of decay; putrefaction: the potato turned black and rotten with corruption
We must keep these roots of corruption in our minds in order to see clearly. Corruption involves a knowing betrayal of stated purpose, typically for advantage at the expense of others. It is a type of fraud.
From this we can look at corruption in practice, and see that corruption runs all the way from corrupt ticket inspectors to corruption at the geopolitical level, where false claims are made by a state's leadership in order to justify the invasion and destruction of another state.
We've published a lot about corruption. Corruption hidden by secrecy and corruption hidden by complexity. According to Google, there are more than 1.5 million web pages on WikiLeaks' corruption revelations.
Cablegate revelations have been used in many court cases from the International Criminal Court (the ICC) to domestic appeals courts. The most recent has been running since July and involves geopolitical corruption in which the UK government deported the entire native population of the Chagos Islands, turned it into a secret U.S. military base, Diego Garcia, and then conspired with the U.S. to falsely declare it a Marine park to prevent the native population from claiming a right of return.
What the UK Government said to try to not testify:
Steven Kovats QC, appearing for the UK Government, said: "My clients are not opposing cross-examination because they have anything to hide. We are opposing it because, as a matter of principle, it does not seem right in relation to an improperly leaked document. We, as a matter of principle, do not accept that WikiLeaks can effectively compel the Government to defend something which – absent WikiLeaks – there would be no question of it coming before the court at all."
What the judge said when ordering that the UK Government must testify due to information revealed in WikiLeaks' documents:
On Wednesday 25th July, Mr Justice Stanley Burnton rejected the Government's objections and ordered that cross-examination should go ahead. He ruled: "I do not see how the present claim can be fairly or justly determined without resolving the allegation made by the claimant, based on the WikiLeaks documents."
Many types of corruption in the cables are covered up, under the "our son of a bitch" doctrine, where one type of corruption, institutional corruption, turns into another, geopolitical corruption.
In a September 2009 cable from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, the U.S. ambassador had lunch with Maxim Bakiyev, the son of President Bakiyev:
"Bakiyev came across as very pro-U.S., well educated, and dedicated to the betterment of his country. Of course, we have information from many other sources suggesting that he is also very dedicated to his own advancement and corrupt financial interests."
The US title of that section of the cable?
"Smart, Corrupt, and a Good Ally to Have"
Bivol Presentation: https://www.bivol.bg/bivol-ep-crim.html