The founder of WikiLeaks said he might reveal names of Indians holding Swiss bank accounts.

Julian Assange, founder of the website WikiLeaks, said he might reveal names of Indians holding secret Swiss bank accounts next year, media reports said.

In particular, Assange said the information would "affect India" and replied "yes" when asked if he would reveal names of Indians holding Swiss accounts, reports said.

But he refused to divulge more details because Rudolf Elmer, the former Julius Baer banker who allegedly provided Assange with relevant information, is already facing legal action.

"For that [Rudolf Elemer] reason, unfortunately, I cannot speak about information related to Swiss accounts in great detail... we must protect our people," Assange said.

His activities have raised questions about the security of data held in private banks in Switzerland and other locations. (To view an article about the broader issues raised by Assange’s activities and the Rudolf Elmer case, click here).

He also, in the words of one news report in the International Business Times of India, made some “further astonishing revelations about Swiss secrets and the 'hacking' and 'hijacking' of data," when talking about India's National Technical Research Organization - a group he compared with the US National Security Agency.

There have been question marks raised about whether Assange can deliver on his threats. In July, it was reported that two computer discs Elmer gave to Assange and that contributed to his arrest days later contained no secret banking data at all. At a widely covered news conference in London in January, Rudolf Elmer, former head of the Cayman Islands office of Julius Baer, gave Assange what he said were two discs containing information on about 2,000 offshore banking clients. Elmer subsequently returned to Switzerland, where authorities in Zurich Canton detained him. But two of Elmer’s associates who were present at the London news conference now say the discs Elmer handed over to Assange contained no confidential banking data.

India's authorities have had a long-standing complaint about citizens putting money offshore into Switzerland and other places. The stakes are high: the assets of wealthy Indians have tripled to $3.5 trillion in the last decade and are set to swell to $6.4 trillion by 2015, according to a recent report.