The website “Bananaleaks.com” accused the Ecuadorian government via Twitter of attempting to sabotage its operations, reported Fundamedios. According to journalist Santiago Villa, spokesperson for the website, the website suffered an attack from hackers early in the morning of Jan. 28, shortly after the organization published information about two Swiss bank accounts supposedly owned by President Rafael Correa, added Fundamedios.
While the organization was able to reestablish service later that day, hours later hackers mounted a second attack that has left the website offline since, according to a statement published on the organization’s temporary website, Bananaleak.co. The statement added that its Internet provider reported the attack originated in Ecuador and that the IP address used in the attack belonged to the state telecommunications company.
On his radio program, Villa called the move to disable the website “absurd” because the scandal had already broken in 2011, according to the newspaper La Hora.
The website has published several other instances of political impropriety, including a thesis shared by several public officials to obtain a Ph. D. and supposed evidence that the former president of the Ecuadorian Central Bank, Rafael Correa’s cousin, moved funds to tax havens, reported the newspaper El Universo.
Villa claimed last November that a television channel in the United States censored his documentary “Rafael Correa, portrait of the father of the nation” because of pressure from the Ecuadorian government.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
