Hello rubin16,
We are not running fundraising in Russia at this time, but I want to assure you that this was not a decision motivated by politics.
We take compliance with appropriate laws very seriously in everything we do. Out of an abundance of caution, we're not fundraising in Russia right now.
Of course, the fact that we are not fundraising in Russia does and will not have any impact at all on how the WMF continues to support the Russian language Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the Russian Wikimedian community.
Thank you, Lisa Gruwell
On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 7:44 PM, rubin.happy rubin.happy@gmail.com wrote:
There were no recent changes in sanctions and I don't understand why this turn off in donations happened just now.
Ideas about SWIFT kick out are not relevant here, as it was just a discussion some months ago but no such action happened.
Furthermore, the sanctions were placed on particular companies and individuals, there were no prohibitions against all financial relations. So, I could understand if donations weren't accepted when they were sent via a couple of banks under sanctions, but I want to repeat that there is, for example, no prohibition to receive money from Russians.
rubin16 13 нояб. 2014 г. 4:01 пользователь "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com написал:
I'm presuming this is sanctions against Russia kicking in; all sorts of business has been stopped dead in its tracks, not just charity donations. There's even serious moves to kick Russia out of the SWIFT network:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-04/ultimate-sanction-barring-ru...
It strikes me as quite unlikely that there's anything at all WMF can actually do about this. Possibly it could have been handled better, but that won't change the fact.
On 13 November 2014 00:12, Craig Franklin cfranklin@halonetwork.net wrote:
I'm sure that you're correct here Joseph, but this is another example I think where the Foundation should have notified the relevant chapter *before* taking the action, so that they would be ready when the
questions
started rolling in.
Unfortunately, I think we're getting back to the bad old days of
chapter
and user group press contacts being the last people to find out about potentially controversial issues like this.
Regards, Craig Franklin (personal view only)
On 13 November 2014 10:07, Joseph Seddon josephseddon@gmail.com
wrote:
I would hate to preclude any answer from the foundation. However the
laws
that govern the foundation are that of the US. Given the previous and renewed ongoing palaver with Ukraine and the presence of economic
sanctions
and the increasing likelihood of on top of what is already present, I imagine this related to that.
Im not sure of what legal risks accepting such donations would expose
the
foundation to. However such precautions have been made in the past
relating
to unrest.
Its no slight on the country or its individuals, just a precautionary measure.
Seddon On 12 Nov 2014 19:48, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" nemowiki@gmail.com
wrote:
rubin.happy, 12/11/2014 18:48:
We received some alerts from our users that donations are now
blocked
when user is from Russia:
http://habrastorage.org/files/31b/b1f/ec9/31bb1fec9b9e45abb6ac4babcc2371
84.png
Thanks for the information. Everyone can see the same warning by
clicking
the "Russia" link in
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give
Through what channels are donations blocked? Did anyone try sending a wire to the EU (SEPA) account (IBAN GB54CHAS60924241034640), or a
PayPal
donation?
Nemo
P.s.: ROTFLOL "Please email donate@wikimedia.org for more
information
on
how to make a bank transfer to the Wikimedia Foundation." In case
someone
forgets there is an ocean between Europe and USA.
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