Bertrand Lacombe
Lawyer at the Court, Lacombe Avocats
Before declaring that he was abandoning the idea out of ‘ethical concerns’, Michel Sapin admitted a few days ago that he was ‘looking into’ the possibility of giving whistleblowers an interest in the tax adjustments that could be made as a result of their whistleblowing. The aim would be twofold: to encourage whistleblowing in the name of budgetary efficiency and to provide a framework for a practice that has been ‘officially’ abandoned in the name of transparency.
From a semantic point of view, we need to distinguish between the whistleblower, whose courageous and disinterested action is motivated by the general interest, and the person driven by revenge, jealousy or greed. Whistleblowers, as soon as they are paid, become informers: the Petit Larousse tells us that they ‘denounce for despicable interests’. It’s easy to see why Bercy prefers to talk about ‘tax auditors’!
French people’s discomfort with whistleblowing is the result of their culture and history. Our Latin culture does not take kindly to denunciation, which it only legitimises if it helps to confound the perpetrators or prevent a crime from being committed. We are cautious about generalised, horizontal surveillance, despite attempts to moralise our society in the name of civic-mindedness. Is this because our history has taught us that the distinction between the praiseworthy (republican duty) and the servile (baser instincts) has never really been mastered by those in power? The trauma of the Vichy regime and its many denunciations of Jews and members of the Resistance irrevocably made denunciation suspect in the eyes of the French.
In tax matters, denunciation was encouraged from the time of the Roman Republic and then generalised under the Empire, with remuneration amounting to a quarter of the sums recovered by the Imperial Treasury. It seems that success was relative, since Seneca tells us that ‘it was everywhere like a rage to accuse that exhausted Rome much more than a civil war’. However, many countries, particularly in the English-speaking world, exploit and pay unscrupulously for denunciations, including in tax matters. The perception of whistleblowing is less ethical than liberal, and it matters little that it is ‘bounty hunters’ who benefit from it. The United Kingdom, Canada and the United States go so far as to make dedicated internet portals available to potential whistleblowers. The case of Bradley Birkenfeld, who received 104 million dollars from the US tax authorities for having denounced the clients whose wealth he managed at UBS, is a real inspiration. Professionalism is never far away: the first whistleblowing schools were set up in South Korea…
The question of whether tax whistleblowers are already being exploited and paid by the French tax authorities is so sensitive that it calls for several answers. The Minister’s response is always formal: anonymous whistleblowers are never exploited and whistleblowers who are willing to come forward are never paid. The departments concerned, however, are less categorical… probably rightly so: it would otherwise be incomprehensible that the Court of Cassation¹ should have had to rule on the admissibility of anonymous testimony! What is even more curious is that the same Court has ruled against the ‘business’ set up by an accountant who was paid by the National Tax Investigation Department to inform on his clients²…
The remuneration of informers, provided for in customs matters, is widely used in the fight against drug trafficking. It is capped at €3,100, unless the information is particularly significant. The French General Tax Code⁴ is less explicit and states, in relation to indirect taxes, that ‘no informer may claim any remuneration whatsoever unless it is justified in writing that the information he has provided was provided before the report was drawn up.’ It was on this textual basis that the practice, ‘officially’ abandoned, of remunerating tax assessors was based.
Should we go further? Should we generalise this practice, which is confidential in France, in order to copy the Anglo-Saxon model? In our view, this is neither necessary nor desirable. Furthermore, it seems to us that the Perben law, which allows any person who provides information leading to the discovery or identification of the perpetrators of a crime or offence to be paid, is sufficient: tax fraud and tax fraud laundering are offences and informers can therefore be paid… by the Ministry of the Interior.
1 – Cass. Crim. 3 October 2007, 06-82.317.
2 – Criminal Court, 8 September 2010, 09-85.88.
3 – Article 391 of the Customs Code.
4 – Article 1825 F of the General Tax Code.