April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

elief the day directors of such companies are brought to court from
behind their corporate shields,’ writes Nnimmo Bassey, amidst talk that
‘top guns at BP’ may be charged with manslaughter over the Gulf of
Mexico oil spill.
People who have suffered the impact of unjust practices and those who
have been victims of abuse from corporate impunity will heave a sigh of
relief the day directors of such companies are brought to court from
behind their corporate shields. The spins and the twists in legal tangos
that play out so impassively will become a thing of the past.
Whereas corporations do not sweat in the dock, their directors, who are
human like the rest of us, may. It is also possible that pleas from the dock
would be couched in humane terms and that actions and reactions would
become more or less equal as they usually are in physical matters.
In sum, people would sense that justice is reachable in many cases of
confrontation between them and corporate entities.
These are some of the hopes being raised by the possibility of top guns at
BP being charged for manslaughter over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of April
2010. If this happens, it will send a strong signal to leaders of companies
that expose their workers to extreme personal risks.
It will also send signals to companies engaged in reckless activities that
severely impact people and degrade their environment. In addition, it will
offer a glimpse to what may become the norm if an international
environment or climate crimes tribunal is set up for cases of ecocide.
It has been reported that investigators are pawing over documents and
emails that may indicate whether Tony Hayward, former BP chief
executive, and other top management officers made decisions or played
key roles in what led to arguably the most horrendous environmental
disaster in US history. That incident killed 11 workers and spewed yet
unknown barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The internal investigation carried out by BP immediately after the disaster
showed that their managers misread pressure data and authorised workers
of the Deep Water Horizon rig to replace drilling fluid in the well with
seawater – one of the moves in cost cutting suspected to have triggered
the disaster.
BP has admitted to having made some mistakes but sticks to the claim that
they were not ‘grossly’ negligent.
There is something quite gross about that word ‘gross’ before the word
‘negligence’. If it sticks, the possible fines to be slapped on BP may rise
from about $5 billion to $21 billion. It will also complicate things for BP in
their dealings with the partners on the rig, as they seek to share the costs
of the clean up expected to reach about $42 billion.
The significance of this case would also be found in the fact that the
directors of BP would be unable to hide behind the corporate shield, as is
often the case with corporate entities who are persons before the law only
for as much as capacity to earn income is concerned; and are phantoms
when it comes to responsibility for acts of impunity.
Think how instructive it would have been to line up the directors of
Chevron for the environmental crimes in the Ecuadorian Amazonia or those
of Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Agip and the rest for their human rights and