Luxembourg Court Rules No Sentence for PwC Whistleblower Deltour

(From left to right front row, Raphaël Halet, Édouard Perrin and Antoine Deltour. Photographer: Ato Grosso)

LUXEMBOURG – 21 May, 2018 Luxembourg’s Court of Appeal has ruled that former PwC employee Antoine Deltour, convicted of a breach of law for leaking documents about the country’s notorious tax avoidance schemes that benefitted big companies won’t be sentenced and ordered him to pay a fine instead of one euro ($1.18 USD) to his former company.

While the court recorded the offense as a breach of law it withheld any jail time after another court in January declared he was a whistleblower and overturned a previous verdict against him.  A sentence for another former worker, Raphael Halet, was upheld.

Deltour in March had been given a six-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1,500 euros ($1,769) while Halet was fined 1,000 euros ($1179).

The so-called LuxLeaks scandal broke out in 2014 when Deltour turned whistleblower and documents showed large international firms being given tax breaks at a time when Jean-Claude Juncker, now the European Commission President, was Prime Minister of Luxembourg.

It was based on confidential information about Luxembourg’s tax rulings set up by PricewaterhouseCoopers from 2002 to 2010 to benefit clients.

The Luxembourg Court of Appeal declared Deltour a whistleblower as defined by the European Court of Human Rights and he was acquitted on all charges concerning the copying and use of the documents, EU Reporter said.

“It is finally a great victory, we will celebrate it with joy and it certainly confirms our arguments since leaving. This verdict is not surprising,” said Deltour.

The LuxLeaks scandal ensnared companies such as Burberry, Pepsi, IKEA, Heinz, Shire Pharmaceuticals and others in Luxembourg, a country with a reputation as a tax haven and where foreigners like to keep secret accounts to avoid taxes in their own countries.

Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna, described the leak as “the worst attack” his country had ever experienced. During Deltour’s trial, prosecutors claimed the former PwC employee was an “anti-capitalist” and requested he be sentenced to 18 months in prison, but would accept a suspended sentence, the British newspaper The Guardian said.

PwC said Deltour was a thief, not a whistleblower but the court found otherwise although the company said he cost them huge losses.

The Guardian and other media, working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, (ICIJ,) used the leaked data to expose controversial tax practices rubber-stamped by Luxembourg.

The documents disclosed that the country’s authorities had helped 340 big companies to minimize tax payments, in some cases to 1% or less. The revelations led to measures aimed at reducing tax avoidance tactics.

Deltour said he had no contact with ICIJ and didn’t try to hide what he was doing. He copied the files because he thought, “This type of data could document the tax ruling practice, which was widely unknown, especially in terms of scale.”