"I used to work for the government, I now work for the citizens"

Edward Snowden

Emblematic Cases

Julian Assange, symbolic editor of the site WikiLeaks which he founded in 2006, has been a refugee in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for seven and a half years as of June 2012. He feared an extradition to Sweden and then most probably to the United States of America because of the procedures opened against him in these countries. However, in February 2016, five experts from the United Nations pronounced a positive decision concluding that Assange has been a real victim of an arbitrary decision since June 2012. As a consequence, they claimed that the refugee should immediately be released and receive compensations. On May 19^th,2017 Sweden announced that they were abandoning legal proceedings relating to rape crimesagainst the Australian citizen. This was the first important victory in his file. Furthermore, in December 2017, Assange obtained the Ecuadorian nationality which could have predicted exiting the Embassy safely with a diplomatic status as per a request made by the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, but it was turned down by the British governement. Lenin Moreno, once elected President of Ecuador, declared that the Embassy of Ecuador in London would continue to offer the asylum to Assange however things got complicated until we all watched Julian Assange's publicized outing on April 12, 2019 supervised and carried by British police officers. The Australian journalist was directly driven to Belmarsh, a high-security prison located in the London suburbs, where he still is a prisoner today although the British justice on one side refused his extradition to the United States of America on January 4, 2021 and on the other side denied bail for him two days later.

Photographer: Mrs. Monique Dits - Free Assange Belgium Committee

Certain pieces of information revealed by WikiLeakshad been passed on by a young military analyst of the US army, Bradley Manning. He has since been judged in the United States of America for betrayal and was sentenced in 2010 to thirty-five years in jail as he had transmitted classified military documents, namely the video of a ‘blunder’ during an air raid in Bagdad on July 12^th,2007 thus witnessing the shocking execution of civilians. Even if the Obama Administration decided in January 2017 to commute the sentence of Bradley Manning (who has become Chelsea Manning), leading to her freedom on May 17^th, 2017 one was allowed to wonder if Manning was in security since she was set free. The whistleblower was imprisoned again because she refused to testify in a Grand Jury against Assange and has been granted a provisional release after attempting suicide in March 2020.

These two cases have hit the headlines as much as the other emblematic story of Edward Snowden, an American citizen who has been living in exile in Moscow since summer of 2013. He had made public confidential pieces of information relating namely to mass surveillance programs implemented by the US National Security Agency (NSA). These three individual cases have made everyone become aware that the protection of whistleblowers is a huge stake for our democracies.

Admittedly, all the whistleblowers are not imprisoned, in exile, locked up or simply have disappeared, nor on the run abroad. However one has to acknowledge and notice that the large majority of them have paid a high price for their courage, their honesty and their integrity. This is precisely where the ambiguity and the absurdity of their individual situation is found.

Punished. Why? Simply because they dared to tell the truth.

Punished. Why? Simply because they revealed information that had up until now been hidden from everyone.

Punished. Why? Simply for being women and men who exposed the very real danger relating to the interest of the vast majority of citizens.

As Things stand at present

For the past ten years, international financial scandals have been making news. Of course, one will definitely remember that these publicly exposed scandals have allowed and still allow our States to recover amounts that they would never have discovered without the help of citizens who have acted in honesty towards the general interest.

Everywhere in the world, pressures against the ones who dare stand up against the finance industry are extremely violent. Many citizens have been informed of the international tax evasion scandal implemented by the bank Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands and made public by Rudolf Elmer. Many more people remember the Swiss Leaks - HSBC scandal, the LuxLeaks, the Panama Papers and more recently the Football Leaks, the Malta Files and the Paradise Papers. None of these international scandals would have been published without the courage and the extraordinary resistance of the whistleblowers. Some of them have been prosecuted or even sometimes imprisoned whilst being considered as traitors by the financial industry. Others have chosen to stay anonymous, which protects them in terms of security, judicial decisions or even retaliation.

In fields as different as health care, pharmaceutical laboratories, food industry, energy, administration, disgraceful cases have been disclosed thanks to women and men who have refused to support illegal businesses, wrongdoings or actions and which were against their personal and professional ethics. The multiplicity of the scandals proves the usefulness of their approach for the general interest and the democracy.

Nowadays, one does not have to prove that whistleblowing is one of the most efficient ways to expose crimes and corruption. The numerous scandals that have been disclosed for the past ten years have led to the vote of new laws everywhere in the world. Beyond their necessity to exist, do the laws efficiently protect the citizens who have allowed information of general interest to be known by all?

Whistleblowers never change their version of the facts when they face courts, their administrations and journalists. This is why one tries to break them down with discredit so as to avoid that the scandals be multiplied whereas the level of corruption has never been as endemic. On a yearly basis, the NGO Transparency International publishes an index of perception of the corruption. One can then learn in their report published in January 2017 that in 2016, France ranked 23^rdout of 180 countries analyzed.

Whereas the published figures are alarming with breaches of default to integrity in 2014, the French ‘Sapin II’ law, which was voted on December 9^th, 2016 gives the possibility to a company that committed fraud to negotiate a fine without legal recognition of its guilt, instead of being subjected to a long judiciary procedure. What about the integrity of our economical, political and legal ruling class regarding the fundamental question of the protection of citizens revealing the wrongdoings of ‘cheater companies’? Wouldn’t it simply be a matter of buying the silence and the peace for the company to continue its frauds and / or wrongdoings? On the contrary, certain people are very satisfied with what the law provides for because the company that commits fraud must recognize the facts and it is planned that the documents relating to the settlements then achieved be published. This would constitute an acknowledged advance in terms of criminal justice of our country. Furthermore, associations such as Anticor and Transparency International will be able to associate in a court action with the Public Prosecutor in cases of corruption of foreign civil servants. The ‘Sapin II’ law created the breach in influence peddling by a foreign civil servant.

In November 2015, during a colloquium organised by Technologia, a company specialised in the preventive measures of professional risks, I learnt that the role of whistleblowing had been granted to the CHSCT (French Committee of Hygiene, Security and Working Conditions) by a law passed on April 16^th, 2013 “relating to the independence o