US trial begins over alleged BNP Paribas role in rights abuses in Sudan
Bank’s lawyer responds that it ‘isn’t to blame’ as class action by Sudanese refugees kicks off in New York courtroom
BNP Paribas “never thought twice” about the people of Sudan as it ran a profitable business in the country at a time of “destruction and displacement”, a lawyer fighting a class action against the bank told a jury on Thursday.
Bobby DiCello, who represents a group of Sudanese refugees now living in the US, opened his civil case against the French lender in a Manhattan courthouse by saying the bank had played a direct role in an “organised campaign of destruction” by Sudan’s former ruler, the dictator Omar al-Bashir, in the late 1990s and 2000s.
“They knew what he was doing as they were giving him money and their services, their visits, their courtesies, their kindness and their professionalism,” he said.
The hearing marked the beginning of a rare case of a global bank facing a US jury trial over allegations that it enabled human rights abuses through its provision of financial services.
The suit, which was first filed almost a decade ago against France’s biggest bank, is due to be heard in New York over the next 10 weeks.
The African country was riven by multiple internal wars during Bashir’s rule that led to the death and displacement of millions, including the second Sudanese civil war and the Darfur war.
Bashir was charged by the International Criminal Court in The Hague with crimes against humanity, including war crimes, murder, torture and genocide, for turning the government’s armed forces against civilians in the course of a campaign against rebel groups. Bashir was deposed in a coup in 2019.
Lawyers for the refugees said they would introduce evidence showing BNP provided financial support to Bashir’s government by giving it access to US financial markets and to “petrodollars”, saying the regime was able to increase spending on weapons that it used against its populace as a result of oil revenue.
“More oil meant more dollars, more dollars meant more weapons and more weapons meant more killing and destruction,” DiCello said.
Dani James, a lawyer for BNP Paribas, told the jury the bank “isn’t to blame” for “terrible things happening in the country”.
“All of our hearts go out to the victims who suffered heinous acts of violence, I’m not going to sugar coat that at all,” she said.
However, she added, “there’s just no connection between the bank’s conduct and what happened” to the people bringing the lawsuit, who say they suffered “extraordinary and unspeakable harm” at the hands of Sudan’s government, according to court filings.
The bank “didn’t provide the regime with a bag of cash”, James said. It issued letters of credit that facilitated global trade and processed payments, she said, describing the work as “just ordinary banking services” and financing trade in “essential goods”.
She showed the jury a timeline of Sudan’s troubled history, including civil wars in the 20th and 21st centuries and conflicts in its western Darfur region which began in 2003. Violence had predated the bank’s involvement in Sudan and continued after it stopped doing business there, she said.
The case brings BNP’s work in Sudan back into the spotlight more than a decade after it pleaded guilty to violating US sanctions by processing transactions on behalf of Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities, agreeing to pay $9bn in penalties.
At the time, in 2014, Preet Bharara, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, described the bank’s “criminal support of countries and entities engaged in acts of terrorism and other atrocities”.
It marked the first time a global bank had pleaded guilty to large-scale, systematic violations of US sanctions, prosecutors said.
DiCello said on Thursday that for a period, BNP Paribas had been “the single most important bank” in Sudan and its work had a “direct link to the dictator’s war machine”.