{"id":20312,"date":"2016-04-27T19:59:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20312"},"modified":"2016-04-27T19:59:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:59:27","slug":"luxembourg-puts-journalist-and-whistleblowers-on-trial-for-ruining-its-magical-fairyland-of-tax-avoidance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20312","title":{"rendered":"Luxembourg Puts Journalist and Whistleblowers On Trial for Ruining Its \u201cMagical Fairyland\u201d of Tax Avoidance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Luxembourg Puts Journalist and Whistleblowers On Trial for Ruining Its \u201cMagical Fairyland\u201d of Tax Avoidance<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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LUXEMBOURG IS TRYING\u00a0to throw two French whistleblowers and a journalist in prison for their role in the\u00a0\u201cLuxLeaks\u201d expos\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0that revealed the tiny country\u2019s outsized role in enabling corporate tax avoidance.<\/p>\n

The trial of Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, two former employees of the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and journalist Edouard Perrin began Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Deltour and Halet were charged in connection with theft of PwC documents. Perrin is charged as\u00a0an accomplice<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0steering Halet toward documents that he considered of particular interest.<\/p>\n

Perrin, a reporter\u00a0with Premi\u00e8res Lignes\u00a0Television in Paris, produced the\u00a0first LuxLeaks reporting<\/a>. PwC documents were later obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and, together with records from other accounting giants, formed the basis for the 2014\u00a0\u201cLuxLeaks\u201d series<\/a>\u00a0involving\u00a0over 80 journalists across the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among the many prominent supporters of the defendants, France\u2019s Finance Minister Michel Sapin\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the French parliament Tuesday that Deltour was \u201cdefending the general interest\u201d and that he \u201cwould like to offer him all our solidarity.\u201d Almost\u00a0175,000 people have\u00a0signed a petition<\/a>\u00a0in support of Deltour.<\/p>\n

The European Federation of Journalists\u00a0has demanded<\/a>\u00a0that Luxembourg drop the charges against Perrin. EFJ general secretary\u00a0Ricardo Gutierrez called Perrin\u2019s prosecution \u201cshameful,\u201d saying that Luxembourg \u201cis going after a journalist who has acted entirely in the public interest.\u201d Reporters Without Borders\u00a0criticized<\/a>\u00a0Luxembourg for being \u201cmore concerned about deterring investigative journalism than protecting the public\u2019s right to information.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why has Luxembourg\u2019s behavior\u00a0been so ferocious?<\/p>\n

The answer can be found, appropriately enough, in a publication of PricewaterhouseCoopers itself.<\/p>\n

According to PwC\u2019s January 25, 2016 \u201cGlobal Regulatory Briefing<\/a>,\u201d its international client base now faces \u201cnew far reaching developments\u201d on matters including \u201ccorporate governance and tax.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luxembourg Puts Journalist and Whistleblowers On Trial for Ruining Its \u201cMagical Fairyland\u201d of Tax Avoidance LUXEMBOURG IS TRYING\u00a0to throw two French whistleblowers and a journalist in prison for their role in the\u00a0\u201cLuxLeaks\u201d expos\u00e9\u00a0that revealed the tiny country\u2019s outsized role in enabling corporate tax avoidance. The trial of Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, two former employees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13661,13663,13659,2324,982,13660,13662,3618,2848],"class_list":["post-20312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-antoine-deltour","tag-edouard-perrin","tag-jon-schwarz","tag-journalists","tag-luxembourg","tag-luxleaks","tag-raphael-halet","tag-tax-avoidance","tag-whistleblowers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20313,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20312\/revisions\/20313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}