OECD complaint

fighting apartheid’s banks through international law.

Our partner:

Evidence uncovered by Open Secrets shows that two European banks were at the centre of the international arms money-laundering machine that violated arms sanctions against the apartheid regime. Open Secrets, in partnership with the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), took the fight for accountability for these economic crimes to Europe using an international accountability mechanism known as the “OECD NCP” mechanism. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is one of the few international mechanisms available to hold businesses accountable for their role in human rights abuses.

The Complaint
The Initial Assessment
Factsheets and other explainers
Media
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The OECD is an international body, tasked with ensuring that companies comply with international law and respect peoples’ human rights. It does this through “National Contact Points” (NCPs) in various developed countries. We laid a complaint against KBC Group and Quintet Private Bankers (then KBL) in terms of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. In laying the complaint with the Belgium and Luxembourg NCPs, Open Secrets and CALS brought the fight for accountability directly to the banks’ doorstep. In a drawn-out process, riddled with bias and conflicts of interest, we eventually lost and our complaint was never investigated, despite overwhelming evidence and a recommendation that it be investigated by UN Independent Expert Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky.

our complaint, correspondence and the final assessments

the complaint

delays and conflict of interest

After protracted and fruitless communication with the OECD national contact points, Open Secrets and CALS wrote to the Belgian and Luxembourg contact points about their excessive delay in dealing with our complaint, as well as the conflict of interest of two of the federations involved as decision-makers of our complaint.

response to the draft initial assessment

After protracted and fruitless communication with the OECD national contact points, Open Secrets and CALS wrote to the Belgian and Luxembourg contact points about their excessive delay in dealing with our complaint, as well as the conflict of interest of two of the federations involved as decision-makers of our complaint.

More than a year after lodging the complaint against the banks, the Belgian and Luxembourg NCPs handed their initial assessments of the complaint, which is a decision of whether there is sufficient evidence to investigate the complaint further. This was not a decision about the merits or substance of the complaint, but merely about if there was bona fide (‘good faith’ / an indication) evidence that suggests that there is merit to the complaint. In their assessments, the NCPs ignored the bulk of the evidence presented to them, and dismissed the rest as ‘dated’. They even went so far as to invent defences for the banks. Needless to say CALS and Open Secrets are dismayed at the impartiality and ineffectiveness of what is the only international mechanism to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses.

final assessment by Luxembourg NCP

final assessment by Belgian NCP

media

press statements, videos, op-eds

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