WikiLeaks: Tampa's Odyssey Marine caught up in WikiLeaks documents

[seafan]

So, now, we've got a government that happily passes the confidential information of a U. S. company to a foreign government to enhance the foreign government's legal case against the U. S. company.



Tampa's Odyssey Marine caught up in WikiLeaks documents

By RICHARD MULLINS | The Tampa Tribune
December 9, 2010

TAMPA--- Sunken treasure, WikiLeaks documents and a priceless French painting.

Suddenly, a great deal of international drama has touched down in Tampa and reads like a diplomatic thriller – with half a billion dollars in gold at stake.
For years, Tampa's Odyssey Marine treasure hunting company has been fighting with the Spanish government over 17 tons of gold and silver coins that Odyssey discovered and brought up off the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Now, it turns out, Spain has been getting secret help since 2007 from an unlikely source: The U.S. government.

Among the thousands of documents released by WikiLeaks are several U.S. diplomatic cables describing how U.S. ambassadors were helping Spain in their cause – partly to help broker a deal to bring a famous painting in Spain to a U.S. citizen who claimed it was looted by the Nazis in World War II.

Specifically, the U.S. offered to provide confidential customs documents prepared by Odyssey that Spain in turn planned to use in court to fight the company.

Odyssey officials are not pleased.

"The cables seem to indicate that someone in the U.S. State Department has literally offered to sacrifice Odyssey and its thousands of shareholders along with the many jobs created by the company in exchange for the return of one painting to one U.S. Citizen," the company said in a statement to the Tribune. "It is hard to believe that this really happened. It sounds like something out of a Hollywood script."

.....

The Spanish were cool to the idea of returning the painting, the cables show, but were grateful after Department of Homeland Security staff in the U.S. embassy in Madrid handed the Spanish customs import documents that Odyssey had filed when bringing the treasure to Tampa.

"The information was confidential," the U.S. cable stated, "and to be used only for law enforcement purposes." The Spanish replied that they were "interested in obtaining the Odyssey customs information to provide to lawyers representing the (Government of Spain) in the Tampa Admiralty Court."

.....

A diplomatic cable a year later describes how the U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Eduardo Aguirre, suggested a deal.

.....

The time is drawing nigh, people.

[Poll_Blind]

1. That is effing insane. They really think justice and law is a joke, don't they?

:shrug:

PB

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. This is exactly what they feared.

That we would find out how often we were continually sold out for the stupidest of reasons.

[ljm2002]

3. A tangled web, indeed...

...and I note it was the Department of Homeland Security staff that gave away this confidential information to a foreign government. And yet our government wants to charge Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, with espionage?

This is getting very interesting.

K&R