Bank ordered to face Sudan genocide financing suit

BNP Paribas has been ordered by a US judge to face a lawsuit accusing the French bank of helping Sudan's Government commit genocide between 1997 and 2011 by providing banking services that violated American sanctions. US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan found ‘too many facts’ showing a relationship between BNP Paribas' financing and human rights abuses perpetrated by the government, The East African reports. He called it premature to decide whether it was reasonable to hold the bank responsible for causing some of those abuses, which – according to the plaintiffs – included murder, mass rape and torture. The proposed class action was brought by US residents who had fled non-Arab indigenous black African communities in South Sudan, Darfur and the Nuba mountains in central Sudan. The bank had in 2014 agreed to plead guilty and pay an $8.97bn penalty to settle US charges it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian and Cuban entities subject to economic sanctions. While many banks have been accused of aiding in human rights abuses by providing banking services, BNP Paribas' guilty plea was the first by a global bank to large-scale violations of US economic sanctions. Hellerstein said the bank's admission that its employees recognised its role in giving Sudanese entities access to the US banking system meant it could not now argue differently. Thursday's decision came in a lawsuit originally filed in 2016. A different judge dismissed the case in 2018, but a Federal Appeals Court revived it in 2019.