Protestor who stole bank’s chairs to be sentenced
A protestor accused of stealing chairs from a bank as part of a national protest against climate change is due to learn his sentence.
Jon Palais, a member of Basque ecology movement Bizi, has appeared in court in Dax in the Landes charged with stealing 14 chairs from a branch of BNP Paribas in Paris last October.
He told the court that the act was a peaceful, symbolic action calculated to trigger a public conversation about fraud and tax evasion.
Speaking to Connexion he said: “Bizi is a collective working to protect the environment, but time and time again, when green solutions are proposed, we are told there is no budget. The government doesn’t have any money to prevent climate change. But in 2015, the HSBC Swiss tax evasion scandal revealed that there are e60-80billion hidden away in tax havens. Think of how much tax we’re missing!
“If that tax were collected, there would be enough money to prevent climate change, and we wouldn’t have to be living with austerity politics and cuts to public services.”
The group came up with the idea of removing chairs from banks, to highlight the issue, and formed Les Faucheurs de chaises (The Reapers of Chairs), to carry out the plan. They remove chairs from banks openly, in broad daylight, with the press in attendance, and have carried out 40 “chair-removal operations” and “reaped” nearly 200 chairs so far.
Responding to climate change is urgent, they say, because in another decade or so, it will have gathered such momentum, that it will be unstoppable.
Mr Palais says the group is not specifically targeting BNP Paribas, and has also taken chairs from other banks.
He said banks were involved in tax evasion by using accounts in the Cayman Islands.
“Companies there without a single employee on their payroll, are ostensibly making massive, tax-free profits. But the truth is, the profits are being made in France, by real people doing real work, and then being transferred to the Cayman Islands, thus depriving ordinary French people of public services.”
He says that the group does not care whether this is legal or not. In the group’s view it is a case of moral imperative, rather than mere law.
“Since we shone a light on the Cayman Islands, and journalists started digging and asking them questions, they’ve closed down their subsidiaries there, so our actions are working,” he said.
Although the theoretical penalty could be up to five years in jail plus a fine of up to e75,000, BNP Paribas have asked for a symbolic payment of e1.
The bank has declared that it has no funds invested in tax havens, and therefore no idea why it has been targeted by protestors. The two sides have now announced a debate, so that all sides can air their opinions.
