French suspect charged over LuxLeaks scandal
The suspected leaker of documents that revealed secret tax avoidance deals between Luxembourg and hundreds of multinational companies has been charged with theft, money laundering and exposing trade secrets.
The suspected leaker of documents that revealed secret tax avoidance deals between Luxembourg and hundreds of multinational companies has been charged with theft, money laundering and exposing trade secrets.
The suspect's identity has not been revealed, but the newspaper reported that he was a French former employee of auditing firm PwC Luxembourg.
The suspect, who lives in France, appeared before a judge in Luxembourg for several hours and was charged before being released, the newspaper said.
"A person has today been charged by an investigating magistrate in Luxembourg on counts of theft, breach of confidentiality, violation of trade secrets, money-laundering and fraudulent access to an automated data-processing system," the prosecutors' office said on Friday.
The so-called "LuxLeaks" scandal has exposed deals that saved some of the world's largest firms, including Apple, Ikea and Pepsi, billions of dollars in taxes while Jean-Claude Juncker - new president of the European Commission - was the country's prime minister. Juncker survived a vote of no confidence over the scandal last month.
The suspect was charged following a complaint in June 2012 by PwC Luxembourg, which discovered documents had been stolen from the company following a report on tax avoidance by the television channel France 2 a month earlier.
According to PwC executives, the theft was committed in September 2010 by a former employee who had made copies of confidential data over two years without being spotted.
But the scandal did not blow up until last month - just days after Juncker came to office as European Commission chief - when dozens of newspapers pored over a new wave of 28,000 pages of documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, revealing the full scale of the tax breaks won by 340 companies.
They detail "aggressive tax structures" brokered for major companies by accountants Ernst & Young, KPMG, PwC and Deloitte between 2003 and 2011.
A fresh batch of documents released this week dragged in dozens of new companies, including Microsoft-owned internet phone service Skype, as well as revealing that Disney paid just over 0.25 per cent in tax in Luxembourg.
