Crowd fundraising site says they will defy Canadian court order to stop disbursing funds to convoy protesters

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By Paul P. Murphy and Paula Newton, CNN

Online crowd fundraising site GiveSendGo said on Twitter it will not follow a Canadian court order mandating it stop distributing funds to convoy protesters.

“Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo,” the company wrote on Twitter. “All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns.”

The Superior Court of Justice in Ontario granted a restraining order requested by the Government of Ontario against the company and others, asking that funds to the protesters be halted — over $8.7 million USD has been raised in one campaign.

Ontario Attorney General spokesperson Brian Gray told CNN the order prohibits, “any person from disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, in any manner whatsoever, any and all monetary donations made through the Freedom Convoy 2022 and Adopt-a-Trucker campaign pages on the GiveSendGo online fundraising platform.”

The Ontario Attorney General’s office declined to comment on GiveSendGo’s response to the court order.

Although GiveSendGo is refusing to comply with the court order, it may still be forced to comply. That’s because the order also applies to the website’s third-party payment processors.

In its website HTML code, GiveSendGo says it uses “WePay or Stripe” to process payments.

WePay is owned by JPMorgan and Chase. A source at JPMorgan and Chase tells CNN that WePay has not processed any payments for GiveSendGo for several months, and the two companies have no relationship.

CNN reached out to Stripe for comment and if they it would comply with the order, but did not immediately receive a response.

GiveSendGo describes itself as a “Christian crowdfunding site.” In January 2021, Paypal cut ties with the site after it continued to allow the Proud Boys to raise funds on the site.

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