Luxembourg’s press council is calling out a decision by the Court of Appeal that effectively bans RTL Luxembourg from identifying Jos Nickts as the perpetrator in the “Nickts” affair, an embezzlement scandal dating back to the early 2000s.
Nickts was convicted in 2007 of embezzling around 560 million Luxembourgish francs (€13.9 million) from savings given by around 500 postal workers to the investment fund of the Fédération syndicaliste des facteurs et des travailleurs des P&T Luxembourg, the country’s postal union.
“The Press Council is dismayed that, in Luxembourg, the judiciary prohibits journalists from revealing the truth about one of the most significant embezzlement cases of the past 25 years,” it said.
The perpetrator had been the president of the union from 1986 to 2002 and had speculated and used the funds collected from his colleagues for personal gain.
The affair came to light in 2002 and led to Nickts getting a six-year prison sentence, of which two years were suspended.
RTL in 2017 produced a documentary about the affair. Nickts filed a complaint, citing his right to privacy as he had completed his prison sentence, and demanded that his face and name not be linked to the affair publicly anymore.
A first judicial decision agreed with Nickts, and though RTL appealed the decision, the Court of Appeal in October of last year agreed with Nickts too. As such, his name and face have to be blurred and anonymised in future references to the affair.
The press council said it would explore “all possible avenues, both in national and European courts” regarding the recent decision banning RTL Luxembourg from naming the affair after its sole culprit and said it “supports RTL Luxembourg”.
Though the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recognises the “right to be forgotten”, the council argued that it is not applicable in this situation.
“In its rulings regarding the ‘Nickts’ case, the Luxembourg judiciary equated a nationally significant case of breach of trust and forgery – resulting in a six-year prison sentence (with two years suspended) – to a tragic car accident under the influence of alcohol (punished by a two-year suspended sentence). Cases in which the ECHR has prioritized freedom of expression over the protection of privacy were not even considered by Luxembourgish judges,” the council said.
“The Luxembourg judiciary once again demonstrates its tendency to trivialise the fundamental right to freedom of expression when weighed against other rights,” the council concluded, reminding that Luxembourg has been condemned five times in less than 25 years for violating an article of the European Convention on Human Rights that pertains to freedom of expression.
The press council, created in 1979, is responsible for overseeing the code of ethics for journalists working Luxembourg.