James Packer Donates $250,000 to ‘Free Julian Assange’ Campaign

Troubled cassino mogul Henry James Packer has given AU$250,000 (US$174,000) to the take the field to liberal Wikileaks beginner Flavius Claudius Julianus Assange and “bring him rest home to Australia,” The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Assange has been languishing inward a capital of the United Kingdom prison since April 2019, where he is fighting extradition to the US on espionage charges. Prior to that, he spent heptad years tenting out in the Ecuadoran embassy inwards Jack London inwards a call to avoid stoppage and extradition to Sweden to human face spoil charges.

“Of line i reinforcement Julian the Apostate Assange. What has happened to him is outrageous,” Packer told Nine Newspapers. “A lot of mulct people who i am privileged to cognize are working around the clock for his freedom. I testament bear on to financial support him. Whatever it takes.”

Federal prosecutors incriminate Aboriginal Australian indigen Assange of piquant inwards a confederacy to approach a secret US administration computing device with the former Army intelligence information analyst Chelsea Manning.

War Dossiers

In July 2010, Wikileaks began publishing tens of thousands of classified files related to the wars inwards Iraq and Afghanistan, which had been passed to the activistic situation past Manning.

The material included footage and audio frequency of deuce Apache helicopters firing and kill a chemical group of civilians that the crews mistakenly believed to follow armed Iraqi insurgents.

Two Reuters journalists were killed inwards the attack, and 2 children were injured. The crews are heard laughing near some of the casualties.

Assange is a polarizing figure. To many, from crossways the political spectrum, he is a defend of civil liberties and freedom of the push and a crusader for incorporated and governmental transparency. To his critics, he is a cybercriminal who has endangered the lives of hundreds of dissidents inwards Islamic State of Afghanistan and Al-Iraq by publishing unredacted files.

Packer Working on Reputation

Packer’s determination to relate himself with Assange is a rummy one. The billionaire was a scion of Australia’s most powerful media imperium until he pivoted to casinos. And he’s to a greater extent customary to wall hanging around on superyachts with rightwing Israeli prime ministers than throwing his weightiness behindhand anti-establishment political causes.

But Packer came off badly during a regulatory research cobbler's last twelvemonth inward New South Cambria that in the end stripped-down Crown Resorts of its Sydney gaming license. And he told Nine Newspapers this hebdomad he was on a ten-year foreign mission to “rehabilitate his reputation,” so perhaps he wants to follow seen as less “establishment.”

Packer, who resigned from the Crown Resorts board completely inward 2018, citing mental health issues, allay acted same a “de facto director,” exerting a “dysfunctional influence” on the fellowship that had been “disastrous,” according to inquiry chairman Patricia Bergin.

Meanwhile, the accompany he founded was hangdog of “poor incorporated governance, deficient risk-management structures and processes, and a poor collective culture,” Bergin said.

The enquiry found Crown had been “facilitating money laundering, exposing stave to the peril of detainment inward a strange jurisdiction, and pursuing commercial relationships with individuals” connected to unionised crime.

Whatever his reasons, $250,000 is mark alteration for Packer, who expects to create around AU$3.2 1000000000 (US$2.2 billion) from the sale of Crown Resorts to US private equity colossus Blackstone.