More than
70 public figures sign letter criticising Luxembourg’s decision to prosecute
former PwC auditor Antoine Deltour
 |
| Antoine Deltour, 28, could face jail and a heavy fine. He leaked tax rulings that PwC had secured in Luxembourg for some of its clients Photograph: RL/Liberation |
More than
70 politicians, academics, union heads and charity leaders around the world
have come out in opposition to the decision by Luxembourg to prosecute the
28-year-old accountant accused of sparking the LuxLeaks tax scandal.
Antoine
Deltour, who spent two years as a junior auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers
before quitting in 2010, was this month charged with a string of criminal
offences. He has said: “From the beginning, I acted out of conviction for my
ideas, not to appear in the media.”
The charges
came less than six weeks after the Guardian and more than 20 news organisations
around the world, in conjunction with the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), published detailed investigations into the
tax affairs of several multinationals based on leaked tax rulings that PwC had
secured in Luxembourg for some of its clients.
In an open
letter to prosecutors in the Grand Duchy, critics of the decision to prosecute
Deltour argued that the leak had been “manifestly in the public interest,
helping to expose the industrial scale on which Luxembourg has sanctioned
aggressive tax avoidance schemes, draining huge sums from public coffers beyond
its borders”.
Deltour is
charged with theft, violating Luxembourg’s professional secrecy laws, violation
of trade secrets, and illegally accessing a database. The charges stem from an
official complaint brought by PwC. He could face jail and a heavy fine.
The Grand
Duchy is reeling from what finance minister Pierre Gramegna has called “the
worst attack Luxembourg has experienced in its history”.
Luxembourg
tax rulings granted to subsidiaries of Amazon and Fiat were already under
investigation by the European commission, suspected of being sweetheart deals
amounting to illegal state aid.
For months,
Luxembourg has refused to hand over further tax ruling information sought by
the commission, disputing the legality of such requests. Last week, however,
ministers performed a U-turn in the wake of the scandal, agreeing to provide
documents sought by state aid investigators so long as similar requests were
made of other EU member states.
Explaining
the volte-face, Gramegna described the LuxLeaks affair as a “game changer” that
had transformed the way European regulators were scrutinising tax rulings
granted to multinationals.
Politicians
from Germany, France, the UK, the US and Australia were among the signatories
to the letter opposing the prosecution of Deltour, which was organised by a
handful of media groups including the Guardian. The majority of political
signatories were from parties of the left, but there was also support from
among Liberal Democrats in the UK and from the centre-right UMP in France, led
by Nicolas Sarkozy.
US
Congressman Lloyd Doggett, a member of the ways and means committee that has
held a number of hearings on tax avoidance, also signed the letter. So too did
his fellow Democrat member of Congress Rosa DeLauro. In the UK the letter was
signed by four MPs, including the former environment minister Michael Meacher
and two members of the public accounts committee, which this month summoned
PwC’s head of tax in the UK to face a grilling on the Luxembourg situation.
Among UK union leaders supporting the letter were Unite’s Len McCluskey, Paul
Kenny of the GMB, and Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and
Communications Services union.
In
Australia signatories included Ged Kearney, president of the Australian Council
of Trade Unions, and Rev Prof Andrew Dutney, president of the Uniting Church in
Australia. Senior figures from a host of charities and campaign groups
supported the letter, including War on Want, ONE, Oxfam Novib, Action Aid,
Christian Aid, Justice et Paiz, Eurodad, Transparency International, Christian
Aid, Global Financial Integrity, the Fact Coalition and the Tax Justice
Network.
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