Bank of America Corp. chief executive Brian Moynihan said Wednesday that his company was caught off guard when the founder of website WikiLeaks told a magazine of plans to release internal documents from a U.S. bank, Bloomberg News reported.
"We weren't as prepared at the moment we heard about it as we should've been, and now we have done a lot of work" to be ready for the possible disclosure of confidential information, Moynihan said in a speech to business executives in Detroit.
WikiLeaks' Julian Assange told Forbes last year that he would release documents in 2011 showing "flagrant violations, unethical practices" at a bank he didn't identify. He told ComputerWorld magazine in 2009 that his organization had records from the hard drive of a Bank of America executive.
Moynihan set up an internal task force in late 2010 to prepare for a possible release of company secrets, Fox Business Network reported Dec. 2. The Charlotte, N.C., bank also announced in December that it wouldn't process payments intended for WikiLeaks.
Wednesday, Moynihan told the Detroit Economic Club: "We just don't know what they have, and honestly we don't know when, or if ever," information will be released.
Assange has told people privately that he was unable to make sense of the banking data and wasn't sure if it was newsworthy, Reuters reported in February, citing three unidentified people with knowledge of his private discussions.
