FRESSOZ AND ROIRE v. FRANCE JUDGMENT 7 19. At the trial Mr Fressoz stated that the first time he had seen the extracts from the tax assessments printed in the newspaper was when he looked at the proofs before personally passing the article for press. He said he had asked Mr Roire “whether his documents were sound in journalistic terms”, that is to say, “whether the information was accurate and had been checked”. He acknowledged that, as a general rule, passing copy for press was the responsibility of an editorial assistant, who, “if there is a problem, consults the editor and, in the last resort, the publishing director”. The second applicant stated that the photocopies of the tax assessments had been sent anonymously in an envelope addressed to him by name, about a fortnight before they were used in the paper. He explained that he had “checked the plausibility” of the information in the documents, in particular by looking up the level of Mr Calvet's remuneration in specialist works including Fortune France. He said that he had also checked with various persons to ensure that the documents were photocopies of “genuine” taxassessment notices. He specified that he had also verified that they really were tax-authority documents, adding that once it appeared that there was no proof that they had been obtained unlawfully, “the overriding consideration was the documents' significance”. 20. In a judgment of 17 June 1992, Paris Criminal Court acquitted the applicants, holding that the principal offences of theft and breach of professional confidence had not been made out because it had proved impossible to identify who had disclosed the documents or to establish the circumstances in which the offences had been committed. In relation to the offence of breach of professional confidence, the court held as follows: “ ... In the instant case, while it has been established that the originals of the documents in question are notices of assessment to tax held on Mr Calvet's tax file, it cannot be inferred from this that the person guilty of wrongfully taking them for the time needed to photocopy them, or of disclosing them to third parties, or of divulging the information contained in them, necessarily fell within one of the categories of person defined in the above-mentioned provision [Article L. 103 of the Code of Tax Procedure]; since the tax authorities themselves have suggested that the perpetrator might be 'someone from outside' ... – whatever the security regulations at the time. The fact that the status and professional functions of the person responsible for the disclosure are unknown therefore rules out any possibility of proving one of the essential elements of the offence of breach of professional confidence. Consequently, there is no formal proof that this offence was committed, so that the charge against the defendants of handling the fruits of a breach of professional confidence has not been made out ...”