Some rights campaigners argue that now most western governments, led by the United States, have dropped their strictures on corruption and stolen elections, credit rating agencies could offer the most effective constraint. That hopeful hypothesis hasn’t played out in practice so far. But there may be other limits on authoritarian regimes.
Sudan under General Omer Ahmed Hassan el Beshir never qualified for a credit rating but was widely regarded as one of the most brutal in the world. A...
Some rights campaigners argue that now most western governments, led by the
United States, have dropped their strictures on corruption and stolen elections, credit rating agencies could offer the most effective constraint. That hopeful hypothesis hasn’t played out in practice so far. But there may be other limits on authoritarian regimes.
Sudan under General Omer Ahmed Hassan el Beshir never qualified for a credit rating but was widely regarded as one of the most brutal in the world. And yet, thanks to serial financing deals with leading international banks and oil companies, it was able to pay for the systematic repression of opposition, killing over 300,000 people in Darfur.
Belatedly, the bill for that has landed with the banks. France’s BNP Paribas has been found guilty of complicity in genocidal actions by breaching sanctions to sell financial services to then President Beshir. BNP’s shares have tumbled by 10% since a US jury awarded US$20.75 million to three Sudanese plaintiffs, a move that could lead to a class-action lawsuit of 23,000 Sudanese in the US that lawyers say could ‘seek billions more in recovery’. BNP says it will appeal, describing the court ruling, which relates to actions by Beshir’s regime a decade ago, as ‘clearly wrong’.
Justice delayed is better than justice denied. Credit Suisse was fined for its role in Mozambique’s ‘hidden loans’ scandal almost a decade after the event and after billions of dollars had left Maputo’s coffers.