Today, the inquiry committee investigating the Panama Papers held its first hearing. The committee is mandated to elucidate why banks, business lawyers, audit firms and other finance companies managed to build up a global network of letterbox companies without being punished. My intention is to uncover the firms that are involved in such dirty business and to unmask the politicians that failed to act. The committee is an opportunity for the next European hit against shell companies and to repeat the success of introducing the automatic exchange of information against anonymous bank accounts used for tax fraud. It is time to fight money laundering and financial criminality as we already pushed secret bank accounts: Ice has to become thinner for tax dodging and money laundering!
Clearly we would not have got that far without courageous whistleblowers. Thanks to the revelations, pressure on tax dumping and tax havens has increased enormously. This has sparked the motivation of twelve MEP colleagues of the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament to create a European portal for whistleblowers. Our web portal “EU Leaks” was launched today, allowing whistleblowers to submit messages and documents anonymously to us at the highest possible security standards. With “EU Leaks” we provide a platform for people who are no longer willing to accept scandals against the common good. Tax fraud, money laundering, secretive letter box companies all cause billions of Euros of damage for taxpayers. In the Diesel gate scandal key information was covered up. There is a severe lack of transparency all over. With the help of whistleblowers we would like to uncover breaches of the law, misconduct, abuse of power, incompetence, discrimination and so forth in relation to EU law, in the EU institutions, enterprises and the member states. Any information we receive will be analysed and in all probability used politically for making Europe better. We want to ensure that European values and laws are treated with utmost respect!
You can find our “EU leaks” platform here: http://www.greens-efa.eu
Showing moral courage is not a crime. On the contrary, unveiling illegitimate practices has to be protected and not sanctioned. We have already presented a Green proposal for a draft EU directive ensuring an effective protection of whistleblowers at EU level. We will continue calling for a secure legal framework. More and more supporters from all political groups in the European Parliament are joining this initiative. It is high time that, the EU commission put forward a proposal for the European protection of whistleblowers.
I am looking forward to receiving your leaks which can be sent either directly to my office or securely and anonymised via the EU leaks platform!