WikiLeaks: Reveal US Banks Document Next

Julian Assange says he’ll levy a “tremendous reputational tax” on unethical companies.

After revealing hundreds of thousands of Pentagon and State Department documents, the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, intends to expose bank documents next. Assange talked to Forbes on Monday, saying the site plans to release tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank early next year.

Assange declined to name the bank, except to say it's a major U.S. bank still in operation. He said that he expects the disclosures will lead to investigations.

He compares what he is ready to unleash to the emails released during the Enron trial, Forbes reports. "You could call it the ecosystem of corruption," he told Forbes. "But it's also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that's not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they're fulfilling their own self-interest."

While the promised release of bank documents would be the largest assault by WikiLeaks on the corporate sector, Assange says the business community should expect plenty of sequels, according to Forbes. Assange says he has unpublished, damaging documents on pharmaceutical, finance and energy companies, as well as on other governments, including Russia.