This is not a scandal in Luxembourg

At the beginning of the 1970s, Investors Overseas Service (IOS), a Panamanian company run by an American businessman, Bernie Cornfeld, with some of its subsidiaries domiciled in Luxembourg, experienced a spectacular collapse. This was the first time that the Luxembourg financial centre appeared in the local and international media as a player in a globalised financial world. The crash of IOS referred to by some European press outlets as a Luxembourgish scandal, was not described in the same terms by the Luxembourg press and political elite. This case study examines how (financial) scandals erupt and are closed down in small countries.