I have made more than several trips to Iceland over the past several months. I genuinely love the place. The population is small, highly educated, friendly, and welcoming to outsiders. I have been consistently surprised at the number of Syrian, Kurdish and Ukrainian refugees that I have met, all of whom tell me how happy they are there, despite the high cost of living and less-than-optimal weather.
But one of the things that I like the most about Iceland is the fact that the courts are not afraid to take on big, vested interests. And I especially mean the banks.
That is why I go to Iceland so regularly. I serve as the “brand ambassador” for an Iceland-based tech startup and software development house called Talk Liberation.
The company has almost 50 employees spread over 14 countries, and it offers several fascinating products, including a social media platform called Panquake that offers to provide an outlet for whistleblowers and genuinely free exchange of information, a link-shortening and archiving service called WLDragnet, and a soon-to-arrive digital marketing dashboard.
Talk Liberation is utterly committed to user security and privacy, while maintaining an unparalleled level of transparency, something that should be important to all of us.
I am proud to be associated with Talk Liberation, but the company has not had an easy road. In 2022, in a crippling, unjustified, and probably illegal move, the company’s bank, Islandsbanki (Iceland Bank) arbitrarily and without any warning or notification, froze Talk Liberation’s accounts and seized the $1 million in investor money that the accounts held.
The bank invoked money-laundering and anti-terrorism financing laws as a justification before changing its mind and releasing the money nine months later.
The bank did, however, ban Talk Liberation from doing business with it, making a series of outrageous allegations, disproved by voluntary disclosures subsequently made by Talk Liberation.
Other Icelandic banking institutions subsequently also refused to do business with Talk Liberation, apparently having heard of the Islandsbanki seizure through the global AML system.
The bottom line, at least so far as Talk Liberation is concerned, is that the company had done nothing wrong, while Islandsbanki by its actions effectively admitted that it was wrong for freezing the account, but offered no explanation, apology or compensation for the costs and damages inflicted upon the company.
Indeed, the release of new products and services was substantially delayed while the matter was being resolved.
In March 2023, Talk Liberation hired the same (very prominent) attorneys who had represented WikiLeaks in Iceland and filed suit against Islandsbanki. That is why I have been coming to Iceland.
The bank’s strategy so far has been simple: Just stonewall. As we used to say in the CIA, “Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.” It held to that strategy until June 19, 2025, when the judge ordered it to start producing witnesses. The next hearing, with witnesses, will be on September 2. I’ll get to that in a moment.
The story is bigger than just a small tech company being manhandled by a big bank and then suing it. You see, in just the past month, Talk Liberation founder Suzie Dawson, a New Zealand national, has also been forcibly debanked in New Zealand with no explanation or recourse.
Suzie is a well-known figure in the international activist community. Is that why she has been debanked? Is that why her company’s accounts were frozen? Is it because she was close to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Doesn’t she deserve an explanation? Doesn’t everybody deserve due process?
Islandsbanki’s strategy has been to say nothing at all. In the first court hearing which I attended several months ago, the bank’s attorney just sat there in the courtroom, mute. In his written arguments, he said that, because Talk Liberation is suing the bank, every bank employee was thus a “defendant” in the suit and that Talk Liberation should have no right to call any bank employee as a witness.
That is ridiculous, of course. Now the bank has tried to use Talk Liberation’s inability to obtain banking services in Iceland as evidence against Talk Liberation. As Suzie Dawson testified, it is like cutting off a man’s legs and then asking why he can’t run.
And to make matters more difficult for Talk Liberation, Icelandic law does not have the concept of discovery. The bank is thus not compelled to turn over evidence of its wrongdoing to Talk Liberation.
Instead, Talk Liberation has to tell the judge something along the lines of “We know that the bank has ABC document, which says XYZ, and we want a copy of it.” That is insane. Why not just say “I had a psychic vision that the bank has ABC document that says XYZ and we want a copy of it”? You would have an equal chance of getting that document.
As I said, the judge was having none of that. Suzie testified on June 19, as did a former Icelandic attorney who worked to register the company in Iceland and to open the bank account. They testified independently of one another, have not had contact with each other in several years, and yet each said exactly the same thing under oath.
The judge appeared to be convinced. She could have thrown the case out or upheld the bank’s request to deny Talk Liberation access to bank employees testifying under oath. But she did not.
She told the bank to produce the employees and to come back to court on September 2 to explain why they did what they did. It was a procedural victory. But it was a victory nonetheless. And it upheld the tenet of equal justice. The little guy won a battle against a Goliath in what is likely to be a long war.
In the meantime, you can learn more about the case at www.badbanki.com. And you can learn more about Talk Liberation at www.talkliberation.com.
CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.
Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
Click the whistle and donate
When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.
CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.
Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.
CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.
We sincerely thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.
Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.
Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.
By using this site, you agree to these terms above.
About the Author
John Kiriakou was a CIA analyst and case officer from 1990 to 2004.
In December 2007, John was the first U.S. government official to confirm that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, a practice he described as torture.
Kiriakou was a former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a former counter-terrorism consultant. While employed with the CIA, he was involved in critical counter-terrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but refused to be trained in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor did he ever authorize or engage in such crimes.
After leaving the CIA, Kiriakou appeared on ABC News in an interview with Brian Ross, during which he became the first former CIA officer to confirm the existence of the CIA’s torture program. Kiriakou’s interview revealed that this practice was not just the result of a few rogue agents, but was official U.S. policy approved at the highest levels of the government.
Kiriakou is the sole CIA agent to go to jail in connection with the U.S. torture program, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing.
John can be reached at: jkiriakou@mac.com.
