After eight years of legal combat, the Mosellan has just been definitively recognized “whistleblower” by the ECHR in the tax evasion scandal in Luxembourg.
By Philippe Marque (Metz, Correspondence)
Like a symbol, his smartphone dropped a few hours after the judgment rendered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The anecdote amuses Raphaël Halet: “He has held all these years good, but this is the sign that his mission is over.” In this cafe near Metz station, the Mosellan is in a playful mood. He savor his victory: “Everyone cannot say that he managed to have a state condemned like Luxembourg!” His legal fight, eight years old, has just ended on February 14. For the Grande Chamber of the ECHR, Raphaël Halet is not an obscure thief of documents sentenced on appeal by the Luxembourg justice. After the Vosgien Antoine Deltour, he is indeed recognized as the second “whistleblower” of the “Luxleaks” affair, a tax evasion scandal revealed by the press in 2014.
Condemned for violation of freedom of expression, Luxembourg must pay Raphaël Halet 15,000 euros for “moral damage” and 40,000 euros for legal costs. “The information I delivered is finally recognized as just and useful to the general interest”, breathes the 46 year old man.
Rehabilitated by justice, he could also have lost everything. It was with the family, with his wife and two children, that he presented himself in Strasbourg before the highest jurisdiction. The quartet held out: “In such a case, it is the whole family environment which knoculates physically, mentally and financially.” Because nothing predestined this man from a modest background to find himself at the center of the one The biggest financial scandals that have shaken Europe. Born from two disabled and separate parents, he is raised in values of righteousness, humility and work by his grandfather teacher and his grandmother, from the factory to the stewardship of the school.
“It was the opposite of what I was”
In 2006, he is recruited as personal assistant in a tax department, at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), a firm managing the taxation of the largest multinationals. “In Luxembourg, I discovered easy money, competition, cynicism. It was the opposite of what I was,” recognizes this former photographer whose society has pericked and who had to chain the temporary workers Small mason’s jobs, garbage collector and operator in a call center.
Four years later, he became head of a small team of administrators responsible for processing all the tax documents established by PWC for his customers: “At the time, I did not understand much. I Was a bit like a worker who makes a chain room without really knowing what she is going to serve. “The click comes in May 2012, from the program” Cash Investigation “, on France 2. It reveals how companies escape Tax thanks to very elaborate tax assemblies invented by PWC. “It was a shock,” admits the border.
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