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?
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.
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.
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:
So, actually, the Luxembourg authorities are prosecuting Deltour. Not PWC.
So, well up to Ritchie’s usual standards of accuracy and honesty.
Someone should run Ritchie’s babble through GoogleTranslate and see what pop out at the other end…
Julia,
The TL;DR version is “L’etat, c’est moi.”
Nulla contro lo..
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.
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.
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?
Who knew? I will never be able to change a car tyre with peace in mind in that part of Scotland again.
SE
G&T well earned. I’m off to enjoy my champers.
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.
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.
Z-berths have their own, pretty accurate, Wikipedia page. This is malicious ignorance.
Is less fun than AUTEC. ‘Nuff said.
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.