Harry Halpin spoke to them and said it was possible.
Arguably Pak isn’t the donor. That narrative should not form the DAOs legal position and nullifies the public’s donations. They were essentially paid for their art and were asked to transfer the proceeds to Wau Holland via DAO leadership.
Could @SilkeNoa explain here the DAOs legal position on this matter please.
About “finder fee” from WHS,WHS sent a follow-up email on 2024.12.27 18:14 to avoid my misunderstanding.the original source and full discussion of the “finder fee” come from here.
PS: I should add in order to prevent misunderstandings:
The reason for paying a finders fee to Gabriel was the fact that
Assangecampaign-AU is not a charity. Therefore, we would not have been able to
transfer funds to it apart from concrete projects, which always put a high
administrative overhead on us. The way out was to declare the payment a “finders
fee”, which is possible under German charity law. Therefore we transferred 3.5%
of Pac’s ETH donation to an ETH account that had been set up by Gabriel. And,
afaik, there is still a substantial amount on that account. Please be careful,
some information may not be entirely accurate as I am doing this off the top of
my head.Please feel free to ask more questions. You are the first person we are
communicating with in the environment of the assange campaign besides Flick.
If we’rre discussing the one and same organisation (and I don’t know whether there was more than one) - in Australia this entity is described as the following and could have operated as a charity.
Recently I discovered that there is an ‘Assange Campaign Incorporated’ and it was registered in Victoria, Australia in April 2022. At this point it could be a business or it could be a charity. Can’t work it out any further. It may not be based within Australia too.
If Wau Holland has transferred funds to a business they may be in breach of German law. That’s why I fear that the unspent funds may actually be lost.
from WHS,they acknowledge the legal provisions that favor them but remain unresponsive to the significance of donors’ intentions in reclaiming the remaining funds.
I am sorry to hear that. But we will not make this our problem.
We looked up German laws,the rules regarding unused donated funds to a
foundation under the German Stiftungsaufsicht (Foundation Supervision Authority)
are primarily focused on ensuring that the donations are used in accordance with
the foundation’s purpose and the donor’s intentions.We saw the tweet about chatGPT’s opininon on German foundation law. We were
impressed, how accurate it was.On the ownership of the remaining funds, we hope to consider the will of real donors.
Returning Donations: Generally, once a donation is made to a foundation, it
becomes the property of the foundation. However, if there’s a clear violation of
the terms under which the donation was accepted, such as not using the funds for
their intended purpose, there might be legal obligations or considerations for
returning the donation, though this is more commonly addressed under general
charity law rather than specific foundation regulations.
https://www.grfcpa.com/resource/when-nonprofit-organizations-should-return-donations/ <https://www.grfcpa.com/resource/when-nonprofit-organizations-should-return-donations/>I agree. Again, we did not misuse the donation. And, as written in the
transparency report, we will negotiate the use of the remaining funds with our
tax advisor, the Stiftungsaufsicht, and the tax office. Please not that we are
active in politically sensitive projects and therefore, we can just not afford
the slightest incorrect spending of funds or else we will loose our charity
status. We have already experienced such a political intervention in 2010 when
the “cables” got out. Our charity status was recalled in 2010, but we got it
back in 2011.
as the legal donor, Pak could potentially reclaim these funds, but we haven’t made such an attempt. I think the possibility of Pak reclaiming the funds definitely exists. we should contact with Pak. the donor’s intentions is important on remaining 3681eth.
I would not agree that they are.
My point is if people here keep suggesting that Pak is the sole donator than let’s just give up.
Also if we are to sell the NFT - it should be displayed.
In most auction scenarios, the winning bidder is considered the source of the funds, as they are the ones paying for the auctioned item (here, the NFT). Pak did not provide funds; they received the payment for the NFT from the DAO. They were the recipient of the auction. Wau Holland is another recipient - not the donor. Both Pak and Wau Holland are recipients.
Thanks Peter, thank you for your warm and friendly suggestions. the community believes you are an objective and fair third party. we need you to provide us with more suggestions and actively share your views about this place.
Why do you keep treating Park as the main force in rescuing Assange? You’ve been confusing the process. Everyone’s donations are for Mr. Assange, not to buy Park’s meaningless digital NFT! I’m telling you very clearly: all donors are doing it to save Mr. Assange, not for that NFT. NFTs are worthless. This auction process is just an intermediary to circumvent legal liability. Everyone knows this, but you keep twisting the facts. How shameless! Once again, Park is just an intermediary hired to help. They are not the ones saving Assange. It’s everyone in this community who is saving Mr. Assange!
If the program stated that Park was the only donor, then the auction process was definitely a scam, because all the publicity was for Mr. Assange’s free donation, and 99% of people were unaware that the money was used to buy Park’s NFTs. If Assange had clearly stated in advance that all the money was used to purchase NFTs, would the donation process have gone smoothly? Could Assange have raised tens of millions of dollars?
You’re correct - 670 ETH was Pak’s take for an open edition of NFTs that allowed buyers to input text that was crossed out by a thick line to create NFTs. That was the second fundraiser.
Although it is difficult to repay the funds in the short term, it is necessary to clearly express the official stance on this fund to the outside world. Registering the DAO as a legal entity is also a consensus reached through discussions, and the team needs to implement this asap.
I believe WH should now deliver a fuller report for each of the years 2023, 2024, 2025.
The public only knows about a few details of their activities for their project in the first year after they received funding contributions via the DAO contributors. Also what contributions did they receive separately from the general public?
For their legal expenses - I would like to see those broken down. I undertand that the Spain UC Global case was paid for by the Spanish Government but Im not certain if Roth Law were reimbursed by WH for the journalists plaintiffs in the American UC Global spy civilian case.
Also what was the breakup re legal expenses to Australian, UK and US lawyers re the Extradition case itself? What was pro bono, what wasn’t? What was backdated, if any?
Apart from that there are few details in relation to media and publicity campaigns made known.
I think for each year WH should publish this information - so at least the donators learn what exactly they helped cover as separate to broader public donations.
If the DAO had handled these matters it would all have been made public - as each transfer would appear on the blockchain. I don’t think a not for profit should be treated differently and Im very surprised that mainstream media are letting this go.
I emailed WH awhile ago about updates on their transparency report, and never got an answer. But Wau Holland Stiftung, Stella, and some of the WikiLeaks crew are presenting at Disruption Network Lab in March.
You get yelled at and accused of things if you report on it.
Reporting objective facts is fine. Heresay, no.
AFAIK Julian Assange’s legal defence was the most expensive UK extradition to date.
No other extradition case on record has come anywhere close to €14 million in legal spend.
Sometimes I wonder if the UK ended up partially charging his legal team for the cost of the Ecuadorian embassy policing - which a UK judge in 2019 put at around £16 million ($21 million).
The reported cost on the UK side for the hearing in 2021 was around
£317,000 to the UK taxpayer. Assange extradition case has cost British public over £300,000
Compare to WHS transprency report - A total of EUR 18,334,066 was spent, of which EUR 14,046,706 was for legal fees and court costs and EUR 4,287,360 for public relations work. Nov. 2024
Standard UK extradition hearings are inexpensive:
• European Arrest Warrant (EAW) cases average around £13,000 each.
• Non-EU cases (like the US treaty) average £62,000.
• A typical contested hearing at magistrates’ court level can be as low as £5,000 in legal fees (excluding disbursements).
So yes, I think the legal cost invoicing should be examined thoroughly. The public should be made aware if Assange was charged recuperation costs to the UK taxpayer for the embassy situation. (Why else did it cost so much, if this was not included? The prosecution side cost nowhere near the defence amount. In fact no country would sign up for extradition treaties if it did!)
As for the proposal request to return the funds, I don’t think any such action is going to be allowed. No leaders are pushing for it at all. In which case that means either the DAO implements a proposal to bring in its own revenue or individuals commence their own rage quit proposals if no action on Logan’s proposals commence.
