Editorial – An attack on Véronique Poujol is an attack on us all

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Before the internet era, poison-pen writers would cut out capital or lower-case letters from newspaper articles and paste them onto a sheet of paper, sending them by post to their target or the press to spark public intrigue. The impact depended on the media's goodwill and judgement.

Nowadays, all it takes is buying a domain name and launching a pseudo 'journalistic investigation' online to drag someone's name through the mud with complete impunity, since it is just as easy to hide behind front companies on the other side of the world as it used to be to set up a letterbox company in Luxembourg.

Among the jumble of grotesque and unfounded slanders, accusing Véronique Poujol of bias and defamatory intentions, only one is true: she is a 'feared' journalist. She is certainly feared by the scoundrels of the financial sector who would prefer no one to reveal their convictions by the courts for their malpractices aimed at enriching themselves by circumventing the tax authorities or laundering money. She may also have been feared by certain governments when she exposed the inadequacy of anti-money-laundering legislation in the 1980s or the 'watch affair' in 2013. She is feared because she approaches her subjects with rigour and impartiality.

She has never written an article with the intention of harming anyone, nor has she ever boasted – either in the newsroom or in private – about nailing so-and-so to the pillory. Her articles are factual, well-researched, properly sourced, and never vindictive. Indeed, her ethics and the quality of her work have been recognised by the courts on every occasion that a supposed victim of her writing has taken her to court. For nearly 40 years, Véronique Poujol has dared to cover topics that other journalists tend to shy away from because they are too technical or too sensitive. In doing so, she has, probably more than any other journalist, served democracy and the rule of law in the Grand Duchy. This is what her modern-day posion-pen writer cannot stomach.