Status: 02/14/2023 4:32 p.m
In the affair about corporate tax practices in Luxembourg, informant Halet has now also been classified as a whistleblower. The European Court of Human Rights also ruled that the state of Luxembourg must compensate him.
This was an important procedure for the European Court of Human Rights: the Grand Chamber decided, so a total of 17 judges were involved. Not all of them agreed, but a clear majority opted for the protection of whistleblower Raphael Halet. The courts in Luxembourg had wrongly convicted the man. He therefore receives compensation from the state of Luxembourg of 15,000 euros and 40,000 euros in legal costs.
Plaintiff Halet is happy after eleven years to finally get justice. “This isn’t about me, it’s about our children, about other whistleblowers, about other citizens who can now use these arguments,” Halet said. After all the good and bad phases he went through, others could use the judgment in the future when it comes to sentencing whistleblowers.
Fine for violated employer interests
So far, Halet had always lost in court. The former PwC employee should pay because he had harmed his employer’s interests. He could not claim that he had acted in the public interest because his information was not that new. In fact, Halet was only the second whistleblower in the disclosure of the major “Luxleaks” scandal.
First, another PricewaterhouseCoopers employee, Antoine Deltour, had passed 45,000-page copies of internal documents to a journalist. It was only when the press reported on this basis that the Luxembourg state, through the mediation of PricewaterhouseCoopers, was exempting international corporations from taxes on a large scale, did Halet report to the press with further documents. Because it was nothing new, Halet was sentenced.
For Halet’s lawyer, this circumstance was a completely inadmissible argument: “It’s up to the respective journalist to evaluate his sources. That’s not the job of the source itself. You can’t blame the whistleblowers for that.”
Halet had received a supposedly small fine of around 1,000 euros in Luxembourg. But punishment is punishment, according to his lawyer. That would also deter whistleblowers.
The “LuxLeaks” affair
In the “LuxLeaks” scandal, confidential tax agreements between Luxembourg and 340 multinational corporations became public. Among the companies that got the opportunity to avoid billions of dollars in taxes as a result of the deals were Amazon, Apple, Ikea, Pepsi, AIG and Verizon. The agreements were concluded under the then Luxembourg Prime Minister and later EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
ECtHR reaffirms whistleblower protection
The judges of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg see it the same way. They say that the public interest in uncovering such events was significantly more important than the employer’s interest in not disclosing confidential information.
In any case, Halet contributed to a public debate. The Luxembourg courts had therefore not properly assessed the case. Even small penalties would have a deterrent effect on anyone who wanted to disclose something in the interests of the public.