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A trove of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2012 excludes records of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a government-owned Russian bank, according to leaked U.S. court documents obtained by the Daily Dot.
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The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.
But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.
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One of the emails captured by RevoluSec hackers—but not published by WikiLeaks—is signed by Salim Toubaji, head of treasury at Central Bank of Syria. The email, dated Oct. 26, 2011, informs VTB Bank of Russia that it has “raised the total amount of deposit
” to more than €2 billion. Also contained in the email is a request by Toubaji to VTB’s finance director, Andrey Galkin, for an account “in Russian rubles.”
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The Syria-Russia exchange first appeared on the open web roughly three years ago in a leaked chatlog from November 2011, between a former WikiLeaks staffer and LulzSec hacker Hector Monsegur
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Regardless, the Syria Files should still contain the central bank’s emails from Oct. 26, 2011, concerning its €2 billion and bank account in Moscow: For one, WikiLeaks has published several emails received by the same account (treasury@bcs.gov.sy) from that day. (...)One such email, discussed in depth by RevoluSec members more than nine months before the WikiLeaks release, details the transfer of €5 million from a bank in Frankfurt, Germany, to a European central bank in Austria, the recipient of the email being Central Bank of Syria.
“I hope Russia doesn't kill me,” one of the hackers said, discussing their intent to expose the alleged transfer. “I'm more scared of Russia than Bashar.”
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In response to a request for comment, WikiLeaks said the preceding account “is speculation and it is false.” The spokesperson continued: “The release includes many emails referencing Syrian-Russian relations. 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.” (WikiLeaks threatened to retaliate against the reporters if they pursued the story: “Go right ahead,” they said, “but you can be sure we will return the favour one day.”
