CCPR/C/118/D/2128/2012 State party of articles 2 (3), 7, 10 (1), 14 (1) and (3) (b), (c) and (d), 17 (1) and 19 of the Covenant. He is not represented by counsel. The Covenant and its Optional Protocol entered into force for the State party on 12 December 1989. The facts as submitted by the author 2.1 In 2004 the author was employed as an accountant at the State-owned road-building and engineering corporation ETGR, whose main activity is road resurfacing. The company is based at Mascara and is represented by its Managing Director. 2.2 On 20 January 2005, a dispute arose between the author and the Director of ETGR over the company’s tax return for the month of December 2004. The Director had put pressure on the author to enter a figure of zero for VAT-taxable turnover, when the true figure was 15 billion centimes, calculated on the basis of actual receipts. In the author’s view, the Director’s oral instructions were at odds with his professional duties, as the Director was asking the author to make a false tax statement; he therefore refused to sign the statement. The Director subsequently brought strong pressure to bear on another employee and eventually managed to get him to sign a statement showing a VAT-taxable turnover figure of zero. 2.3 On 26 January 2005, following his refusal to comply with the Director’s instructions, the author received a letter of dismissal, informing him that his functions at ETGR would be terminated as of 31 January 2005 because his contract would come to an end on that date, even though the author was a permanent, not a contractual, employee. 2.4 On 2 February 2005, the author reported a number of criminal acts committed by the Director of ETGR to the Mascara prosecution service: tax fraud, embezzlement, squandering of public funds, unlawful procurement, acceptance of uncovered cheques for a total of 1.1 billion centimes, forgery and use of forged documents, and destruction of commercial documents. 2.5 On 25 March 2005, on the orders of the Mascara prosecution service, the economic and financial unit of the Mascara police opened a preliminary investigation into the author’s allegations. On 30 March 2005, the author was summoned by the Mascara criminal police. When he arrived, he was questioned for an hour. He answered the investigators’ questions and handed over all the evidence in his possession, along with a list of witnesses, and then signed a record of his statements. 2.6 After the author had lodged his complaint, the Director of ETGR had the company’s head of human resources, who was related to the Minister of the Interior and Local Government, intervene. After the head of human resources had approached the Wilaya of Mascara and pressure had been brought to bear on the criminal police and the Mascara prosecution service, the police went to the ETGR head office and seized all the relevant accounting records with the intention of destroying any trace of them. The investigating officer subsequently stated that he had found no evidence to support the charges that had been made. However, the author maintains that he was questioned by the police a second time and provided investigators with the numbers of all the relevant accounting records, which are registered in the computerized bookkeeping system. 2.7 On 20 April 2005, the author sent a letter to the regional police inspector, which he copied to the chief prosecutor of Mascara and the chief of the intelligence and security service of Mascara, objecting to the manner in which the preliminary investigation had been conducted. He received no reply to his letter. The regional inspector did approach police headquarters in Mascara to ask that the investigation be conducted fairly, but to no avail. 2 GE.16-23057

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