© RIA Novosti. Ilya Pitalev
Originally appeared at RT
RT UK’s bank accounts have been blocked, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan reported. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova reacted, saying it seems that in leaving the EU, London also left any freedom of speech obligations behind there.
“Our accounts in Britain have been blocked. All of them. ‘Decision not to be discussed’. Hail to freedom of speech!” RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said on her Twitter account.
Нам закрыли счета в Британии. Все счета. ‘Решение пересмотру не подлежит’. Да здравствует свобода слова!
— Маргарита Симоньян (@M_Simonyan) October 17, 2016
The National Westminster Bank has informed RT UK that it will no longer have the broadcaster among its clients. The bank provided no explanation for the decision.
“We have recently undertaken a review of your banking arrangements with us and reached the conclusion that we will no longer provide these facilities,” NatWest said in a letter to RT’s London office.
The bank said that the entire Royal Bank of Scotland Group, of which NatWest is part, would refuse to service RT.
The letter said the decision was final and that it is “not prepared to enter into any discussion in relation to it.”
“We have no idea why it happened, because neither yesterday nor the day before yesterday, nor a month ago, nothing special happened to us, nobody threatened us in any way. Hypothetically, this may have something to do with new British and American sanctions against Russia, which may be announced soon. It may not. Our legal department is dealing with the issue now,” Margarita Simonyan told RBK business news website.
Commenting on the development, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said it indicated that “Britain on its way out of the EU abandoned all its commitments to protect the freedom of speech.”
Is it a coincidence that this come about soon after the Kerry and Johnston meeting? The more they try to dehumanize Russia the more they expose themselves for what they are; corrupt and gone rogue.
RT is just going to have to find another bank. Their loss.
The way things are going, in a few years there probably will not be a National Westminster Bank.
RT should get officially into Bitcoin. And Putin needs to ease up on the peoples currency. After all. Over 99% of all drug trade and illegal activity are done in FIAT such as the Pound, USD, Rubble, Peso, EURO and so forth. Bitcoin gets us around the Rothschild banking empire. And as we all know, the main business street in Tel Aviv is names “Rothschild Street” for real. Look it up on Google maps.
If John Mason is correct then this action just demonstrates how pathetic the western leader are. In someways it is a good thing if all they can think of doing is blocking some bank accounts. This action looks more like spite and crazy lashing out rather than diplomacy; it’s irritating but harmless.
It follows in the same UK freedom of speech tradition of closing down dissenting satellite-channels a few years back.
This is what you get when you are part of the Western Empire…..RT should learn from their mistakes.
All those who value free speech should boycott The National Westminster Bank until RT are reinstated. Better still pull your money from this bank entirely and put it with people who like democracy and its functions.
Could be a blessing in disguise. Would you keep your money in this loser bank? They already failed once and had to be bailed out by the British taxpayers. RT risks having its deposits forcefully converted to RBS stock when it fails again early next year. NatWest=RBS.
https://finance.yahoo.com/chart/RBS
Well it is really east to reverse this. Simply make business cards and leave them all over cities with a flashy picture and RT’s website. Or Southfronts website on the other side. Or onto paper and tape them to light post in cities. We can easily win the information-war. I would post RT’s official artwork, but for some reason I think the admin blocked my ability to post pro-Russian pictures. So sad… I guess Southfront is censoring freedom of speech same as the UK-Empire sensors RT-news.
Hi! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any issues with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing months of hard work due to no back up. Do you have any solutions to stop hackers?