Yesterday was the opening of the appeal trial in the #LuxLeaks case: French PricewaterhouseCooper’s former employees Antoine Deltour and Raphaël Halet were appealing a jail sentence pronounced earlier this year, for whistleblowing on their company’s tax dodging encouragement procedures. French journalist Edouard Perrin, who exposed the whole case through the ICIJ, came to the trial in Luxembourg’s Cité Judiciaire even though he was acquitted in the first place.
Tax Justice activists came from twenty different European countries, as well as Canada, to show their support to the whistleblowers, call for their acquittal and protest “Tax dodgers should be in court, not whistleblowers!”.
Before the trial, Tax Justice Europe, Action Aid and Oxfam had organized a Tax Dodging Safari Tour around famous though rather discrete letterboxes of the Grand Duché (Amazon, Mac Donald’s), the huge PricewaterhouseCooper building, and other Tax (in)Justice highlights of the territory, in order to illustrate schemes and examples. Two buses, filled with activists and media, participated in the tour: one in English, the other one in French.
Two Press conference were held, in the two different languages as well, with representatives of the Tax Justice family.
The afternoon saw short interventions, in front of a large audience, of several representatives from social movements like Attac, trade unions like CGT, journalism organizations, development NGOs like Oxfam and Action Aid, and many Tax Justice organizations, members of Tax Justice Europe, among which the newly created Tax Justice Luxemburg network.
Activists, family and supporters welcomed the two defendants with a chanting bilingual “Thank you”, illustrated by signs writing in all European languages.
You can read a wrap-up in French here: http://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/infos/partage-des-richesses/paradisfiscaux/intense-mobilisation-5718
