A Luxembourg court on Thursday overturned the verdict against a "LuxLeaks" whistleblower who was convicted of leaking thousands of documents that revealed tax breaks for multinational firms. Luxembourg's highest court rejected the
conviction against former PricewaterhouseCoopers employee Antoine Deltour, who in March was handed a reduced six-month suspended jail sentence with a 1,500-euro fine. 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.
"Today is a victory," Deltour said as he left the courtroom. The court "has clearly indicated towards a favourable outcome here in Luxembourg", he added.
The tiny EU country's highest appeal court said Deltour was wrongly accused as he should have been fully recognised as a whistleblower as defined by the European Court of Human Rights. However, the sentence against Deltour's colleague Raphael Halet, who received a 1,000-euro fine after an appeal, was upheld as the court said he did not fit the whistleblower definition.
Halet said he will be taking his case to the Strasbourg-based rights court, adding: "It will really be up to the judges of the ECHR to decide if I am a whistleblower or not." The blockbuster leak revealed the huge tax breaks that Luxembourg offered firms including Apple, IKEA and Pepsi, at a time when Jean-Claude Juncker, now head of the European Commission, was prime minister.
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