European court recognises French whistleblower behind LuxLeaks case

A French accountant who helped reveal tax breaks for multinational companies in Luxembourg in a scandal known as "LuxLeaks" has won the right to be recognised as a whistleblower at Europe's top rights court.

Raphael Halet, former employee of the accounting giant PwC and whistleblower on the tax ruling at the origin of the so called Luxleaks scandal poses, on March 16, 2021, in Metz, northeastern France. AFP - JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday ordered Luxembourg to pay Raphael Halet 15,000 euros in damages and 40,000 euros in legal costs after ruling that Halet's right to freedom of expression had been violated.

In an appeal against a first ruling on the case, the court decided that "the public interest in the disclosure of that information outweighed all of the detrimental effects arising from it."

Grand Chamber Judgment Halet v. Luxembourg - Criminal conviction of a whistle-blowerhttps://t.co/jP3wjhmZEt#ECHR #CEDH #ECHRpress pic.twitter.com/6zIcyAZxwK

— ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) February 14, 2023

The LuxLeaks scandal erupted in 2014 and sparked a major global push against generous deals handed to multinational companies, which grew even stronger with new revelations such as the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers leaks.

Halet, a former employee of auditing company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), was fined 1,000 euros in Luxembourg over his role in sharing in 2012 internal tax documents with a journalist working for the French TV programme Cash Investigation.

Tax evasion

"It's the end of an 11-year legal fight, and not only legal, also against tax evasion," Halet, who is in his mid-40s, told reporters having come with his family to hear the ruling.

"It's maybe a step forward for others afterwards. That's the reason I carried on with this process for 11 years," he added.

The main whistleblower behind the scandal was Antoine Deltour, another former PricewaterhouseCoopers employee, whose conviction was quashed on appeal in Luxembourg in January 2018.

In its first ruling in 2021, the ECHR had backed the Luxembourg court judgement against Halet that the damage caused to PwC was not justified by the general interest of disclosing the documents.