{"id":33904,"date":"2016-06-29T17:02:40","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T16:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=33904"},"modified":"2016-06-29T17:02:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T16:02:40","slug":"luxembourg-punishes-the-luxleaks-whistleblowers-to-whom-we-all-owe-a-debt-of-gratitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/06\/29\/luxembourg-punishes-the-luxleaks-whistleblowers-to-whom-we-all-owe-a-debt-of-gratitude\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxembourg punishes the Luxleaks whistleblowers to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>TI share the following statement by EU campaigning group <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurodad.org\/\">Eurodad<\/a> of which more than 60 major European NGOs are members, issued this afternoon:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Tax Justice campaigners today condemned the punishment of Antoine Deltour and Rapha\u00c3\u00abl Halet \u2014 two whistleblowers who were instrumental in exposing the infamous \u2018Luxleaks\u2019 scandal.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Deltour was given a 12 month suspended prison sentence and\u00a0a\u00a0\u00e2\u201a\u00ac1500 fine.\u00a0Mr Halet was given a 9 month suspended prison sentence and a\u00a0\u00e2\u201a\u00ac1000 fine. French journalist Edouard Perrin was acquitted.<\/p>\n<p>All three men helped expose the secret sweetheart deals signed by the Luxembourg government that allowed numerous multinational corporations to reduce their tax bills dramatically, in some cases to less than 1%.<\/p>\n<p>Tove Ryding, Tax justice Coordinator at the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) said: \u201cThe sentences imposed on these men are a complete disgrace and an indictment of the system that has condemned them. They acted in the public interest and deserve thanks and protection from prosecution. They revealed the secret tax deals that allowed huge corporations to pay next to nothing to the public purse. These kind of deals mean both developed countries, and the poorest nations in the world, lose billions every year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis information should not have been secret in the first place. There is no reason why citizens should not be allowed to know where multinational corporations do their business and where they pay their taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More than 200,000 people have shown their support for Antoine Deltour through this online petition alone:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/support-antoine-deltour-luxleaks?lang=en-GB\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?hl=en-GB&amp;q=https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/support-antoine-deltour-luxleaks?lang%3Den-GB&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1467301939848000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGjZKxPAgLFyu37GJr9zwlbysFPwg\">https:\/\/www.change.org\/p\/support-antoine-deltour-luxleaks?lang=en-GB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ryding said: \u201cWe are calling for protection for all whistleblowers so that what happened to these three men today\u00a0can never happen again. We also believe it is about time for the politicians to make multinational corporations publish the numbers showing where they make their profits and where they pay their taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TI share the following statement by EU campaigning group Eurodad of which more than 60 major European NGOs are members, issued this afternoon: Tax Justice<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2016\/06\/29\/luxembourg-punishes-the-luxleaks-whistleblowers-to-whom-we-all-owe-a-debt-of-gratitude\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-luxembourg","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}