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.