Luxembourg: a tax haven attacks its own citizens

We just blogged that things are getting nasty for Luxembourg NGOs seeking to take on the almighty finance industry there. The TJN-Germany blog (rough English translation here) provides us more details

What it says is that on the morning of August 5 there was a meeting in the Luxembourg foreign ministry between the Luxembourg Bankers' Association ABBL and heads of Cercle de Cooperation, which recently issued a study of Luxembourg as a tax haven. Curiously, they did not even invite study's author to the meeting.

That afternoon the study was wiped off the Cercle's website, as TJN reported at the time, and the Cercle was threatened with withdrawal of funds. (All member organisations of the Cercle have cooperation agreements with the Luxembourg foreign or development ministry, and the Cercle itself is financed 85% out of state money) You can find the study itself, unfortunately only in German, here, with more background here.

And that is not to mention the barrage of intimidating verbal and written attacks against the report and its author that have poured out of the orc-like Luxembourg secrecy jurisdiction lobbyists.

We will be hearing more about Luxembourg before too long.