A US jury has ruled that French bank BNP Paribas aided the government of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in committing crimes against humanity, including genocide, by providing financial services that helped it evade sanctions, Reuters reported.
A federal jury in Manhattan ordered BNP Paribas to pay a total of 20.5 million dollars to three Sudanese plaintiffs. The victims testified about human-rights abuses and ethnic cleansing carried out under al-Bashir’s rule. The purpose of the trial was to determine whether the bank’s financial services were one of the “proximate causes” of the harm suffered by victims of the Sudanese genocide.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs stated that the precedent could allow more than 20,000 refugees in the United States to seek billions of dollars in compensation from the French bank.
“Our clients lost everything to a campaign of destruction fuelled by US dollars, that BNP Paribas facilitated and that should have been stopped,” said Bobby DiCello, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
A bank representative told Reuters that BNP Paribas disagrees with the court’s decision and plans to appeal.
The ruling is linked to a class-action lawsuit filed by residents of the United States who had fled from South Sudan, the Darfur region and provinces in the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan.
In 2004, the US government recognised the Sudanese conflict as genocide. In 2014, BNP Paribas pleaded guilty and agreed to pay an 8.97 billion-dollar fine to settle US claims related to transferring billions of dollars on behalf of Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities under economic sanctions.
Earlier in October, the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered its first-ever conviction in connection with the inter-ethnic conflict in Darfur two decades ago, finding former pro-government militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, known as Ali Kushayb, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The ICC also called for the arrest of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, former governor of North Kordofan Ahmed Haroun and former interior minister Abdel Rahim Muhammad Hussein, who were previously the subjects of arrest warrants. (African Initiative/GSF)
