IN a significant legal development, US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan has ruled that BNP Paribas must confront a lawsuit alleging its complicity in Sudan’s genocide between 1997 and 2011. The French bank stands accused of providing banking services that violated American sanctions, facilitating human rights abuses perpetrated by the Sudanese government.
Judge Hellerstein expressed his decision, stating, ‘There are too many facts that tend to show that there was a relationship between the financing and the human rights abuses.’ While he deemed it premature to determine the extent of the bank’s responsibility for these abuses, which reportedly encompassed murder, mass rape, and torture, he affirmed the need for further legal scrutiny.
The lawsuit, initiated by US residents who fled regions such as South Sudan, Darfur, and the Nuba Mountains, seeks unspecified damages. A spokesperson for BNP Paribas declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.
This legal saga traces back to 2014 when BNP Paribas agreed to plead guilty and pay a hefty $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges of illicitly transferring funds for Sudanese, Iranian, and Cuban entities under economic sanctions. The Department of Justice highlighted this as the first instance of a global bank pleading guilty to large-scale violations of US economic sanctions.
Judge Hellerstein emphasised the significance of the bank’s prior admission of facilitating Sudanese entities’ access to the US banking system, negating its potential to argue differently now. The US government officially recognised the conflict in Sudan as genocide in 2004.
Thursday’s ruling marks a milestone in a legal battle that began with the filing of the lawsuit in 2016. Despite its initial dismissal by a different judge in 2018, a federal appeals court revived the case in 2019.
However, Judge Hellerstein dismissed claims for punitive damages, citing inapplicability under Swiss law, which governs BNP Paribas’ liability according to previous rulings. The case is titled Kashef et al v BNP Paribas et al, filed in the US District Court, Southern District of New York, under No. 16-03228.