Julian Assange getting 'lion's share' of about $86,000 a year as salary from Wikileaks

Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblower website Wikileaks who is on the headlines for leaking secret US diplomatic cables, is now reportedly making about $86,000 a year on a salary drawn from donations to his organisation.

CBS News quoted WikiLeaks' main financial arm, the Germany-based Wau Holland Foundation as saying that it has collected about a million Euro (1.3 million dollars) in donations in 2010.

Wau Holland is the primary is the primary but not sole financial provider for WikiLeaks, the report said.

From those donations, Wau Holland has established a Greenpeace-like system of salary payments, and the main beneficiary has been founder Assange, who has drawn 66,000 Euros (about 86,000 dollars) in salary so far this year.

Wau Holland has paid a total of 100,000 Euros in salaries to the entire WikiLeaks staff, which indicates that Assange alone is earning a huge amount from the deal. 

According to a Wau Holland spokesperson, WikiLeaks will pay key personnel based on a salary structure developed by the environmental activist organization Greenpeace, and added that the Greenpeace department heads are paid about 5,500 Euros in monthly salary.

However, donations to WikiLeaks have dropped significantly in the second half of the year, the report added.