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This is quite lovely from Ritchie

So, just as Antoine Deltour is now being prosecuted in Luxembourg at the behest of PWC so is the HSBC whistleblower having to live a life under threat.

If there’s a lesson that comes out of this it is that a person revealing tax abuse has to be offered immunity from prosecution in international law. Justice demands it. In these cases, quite literally tax justice demands it.

Apparently we should tell the Swiss what their policy should be over prosecuting people who break Swiss law. But they shouldn’t be able to tell us anything about whether we prosecute people for tax evasion. How colonial.

BTW, is there any prosecution of this guy in international law? No? Then he’s immune from it, isn’t he?

10 thoughts on “This is quite lovely from Ritchie”

  1. He goes on to say that PWC are breaching human rights laws for the prosecution.

    Seeing as the whistleblowing, such that it was, was of “things we don’t like” rather than “things that are illegal”, the public whistleblowing to media rather than any agency is quite clearly in breach of any number of laws so there is no legal defence to it.

  2. And yet another person who doesn’t know what “literally” actually means.

    Although, if that was the depths of Ritchie’s ignorance, then he’d be a lot less dangerous.

    PWC are guilty of a human rights crime by prosecuting

    Interesting. Firstly, I do wonder which “human right” PWC might be breaching if they were undertaking a private prosecution – Article 10 is a limited right and quite specifically includes a limitation “for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence.” So, actually, there is no “human rights crime” that PWC might be committing, even if they, as a non-public body, could actually commit “human rights crimes”.

    And then, it occurred to me, are PWC prosecuting anybody? A cursory Google search on “PWC leak” with Google filling in “Luxembourg” for me, quickly lead me to this Bloomberg article.

    Which includes the following:

    The country’s prosecutor said a Luxembourg judge on Dec. 12 charged a person with “domestic theft, violation of professional secrecy, violation of business secrets, laundering and fraudulent access to a system of automatic data treatment,” according to a statement. The charges follow a complaint filed by PwC in June 2012, prosecutors said.

    So, actually, the Luxembourg authorities are prosecuting Deltour. Not PWC.

    So, well up to Ritchie’s usual standards of accuracy and honesty.

  3. BTW

    Mark C on Ritchie’s blog, referring to who knew HSBC was up to no good, shows us just how difficult it will be for anyone to take a sensible look at this. Jeees he’s thick.

  4. Still, I hope the champagne went down well 🙂

    The comment from the “former financial journalist who has been writing about intelligence matters for several years now” on the WGCE post re Deltour is stupendous (or did I mean amazingly stupid?) But his blog is even better.

    I’m going to have to pop downstairs for a G&T and continue my quiet chortling.

  5. So Much for Subtlety

    Surreptitious Evil – “The comment from the “former financial journalist who has been writing about intelligence matters for several years now” on the WGCE post re Deltour is stupendous (or did I mean amazingly stupid?) But his blog is even better. ”

    Care in the Community really isn’t working out is it?

    Let’s be clear about this: that part of Scotland, during the Cold War era, was pure spook country. You had the submarine bases at Faslane and Coulport and Rosyth. There was a NATO muntions store at Glen Douglas, and other armament depots at Beith and Crombie. Much nearer still you had Gruinard, and the Z-Berth at Loch Ewe, which was a deep sea dock for submarines, which means they can stay underwater until the very last moment. It isn’t on any map. It’s marked only by a single buoy. BUTEC, over the water at Applecross, was where they monitoried submarines’ accoustic signatures. That’s some pretty secretive stuff.

    Spies roamed the countryside. Whenever subs launched there were foreigners taking photos from the waters’ edge. The men in trenchcoats were something of a standing joke. I have it on personal authority that for many years the Post Office in Aultbea, the tiny village on Loch Ewe, stocked the Soviet newspaper Pravda.

    Who knew? I will never be able to change a car tyre with peace in mind in that part of Scotland again.

  6. You had the submarine bases at Faslane and Coulport and Rosyth. There was a NATO muntions store at Glen Douglas, and other armament depots at Beith and Crombie.

    So, in an area the size of Scotland, you had a submarine base (neither Coulport nor Rosyth were submarine bases), a few armaments depots (one for the big bang stuff and two for the HE). Oh and a contribution to NATO. The military industrial complex is taking over the countryside.

    Much nearer still you had Gruinard,

    Icky, indeed, but anthrax, not least because of Gruinard Island, had been comprehensively ruled out as a weaponisable bug therefore was of minimal interest to F/HIS.

    and the Z-Berth at Loch Ewe, which was a deep sea dock for submarines, which means they can stay underwater until the very last moment. It isn’t on any map. It’s marked only by a single buoy.

    Z-berths have their own, pretty accurate, Wikipedia page. This is malicious ignorance.

    BUTEC

    Is less fun than AUTEC. ‘Nuff said.

    I have it on personal authority that for many years the Post Office in Aultbea, the tiny village on Loch Ewe, stocked the Soviet newspaper Pravda.

    Seriously? Has he ever been to Aultbea Camp? It hasn’t been a submarine base since WW2 and the jetty was decrepit (in the no access under pain of dying probably by drowning notice sense) in the 1970s. When i ignored the notice, of course.

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