GENEVA: The Swiss Post Office bank on Sunday closed an account set up by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because he gave “false information”, as he claimed to have lost 100,000 euros in a financial clampdown this week.

The bank, PostFinance, said in a statement that it had “ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange”.

“The Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process.”

Assange had given an address in the Swiss city of Geneva as his residence, it added.

Wikileaks retorted in a Twitter message that the Swiss bank had frozen 41,600 dollars of “Julian Assange's defence fund and personal assets”.

“The technicality used to seize the defence fund was that Mr Assange, as a homeless refugee attempting to gain residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's address in Geneva for the bank's correspondence,” it added.

WikiLeaks advertised the PostFinance account details online to “donate directly to the Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks Staff Defence Fund”, giving an account name of “Assange Julian Paul, Geneve”.

The closure marked a new setback for the WikiLeaks front man amid intense pressure to close the whistleblowing website since it began releasing highly sensitive US State Department cables.

US-based online payment service PayPal on Friday blocked financial transfers to WikiLeaks after governments around the world initiated legal action against the website. That froze 80,000 dollars, according to the site.

“WikiLeaks and Julian have lost 100,000 euros (133,000 dollars) in assets this week,” it claimed.

PostFinance spokesman Alex Josty declined to say whether there was money in the Swiss account, but he underlined that it would belong to the Australian.

“He would have a right to that money and we would ask him where to transfer it,” Josty said.

PostFinance revealed over the weekend that it was in the process of carrying out checks after it failed to find Assange's name registered in Geneva.

“Assange entered Geneva as his domicile. Upon inspection, this information was found to be incorrect,” it concluded.—AFP