Kristinn Hrafnsson

Kristinn Hrafnsson (born 25 June 1962) is an Icelandic investigative journalist known for his former role as spokesperson for the WikiLeaks organisation between 2010 to 2017.He has worked at various newspapers in Iceland and hosted the television programme Kompás on the Icelandic channel Stöð 2, where he and his team often exposed criminal activity and corruption in high places. In February 2009, while investigating the connection between Icelands Kaupthing Bank and Robert Tchenguiz and Vincent Tchenguiz, the programme was taken off air and Kristinn and his crew were sacked.Shortly thereafter, Kristinn was hired by RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. In August 2009, he was working on a story about Kaupthings loan book which had just been published on the WikiLeaks webpage, when the bank got a gag order issued by the Reykjavik sheriffs office, banning RÚV from reporting on the loan book, which could be publicly accessed online via WikiLeaks. The prohibition order was withdrawn later.Kristinn was dismissed from RÚV (his contract was not renewed) in July 2010. After this point, he worked as an independent journalist. Beginning in 2010, he collaborated with WikiLeaks, serving as the organisations spokesman after founder Julian Assange withdrew from the limelight. He has called the December 2010 attacks on WikiLeaks by MasterCard, Visa, and others a privatisation of censorship. In 2012, in his capacity as WikiLeaks spokesman, he defended the organisation on the website of Swedish Television against what he described as a smear campaign by the Swedish tabloid Expressen.Kristinn has been named Icelandic journalist of the year three times, in 2004, 2007 and 2010 by Iceland’s National Union of Journalists.In early 2017, Hrafnsson stated that he was no longer spokesperson for Wikileaks.

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