Governments must start holding companies criminally accountable for serious human rights abuses, including those committed overseas, Amnesty International said in launching a new set of principles for dealing with corporate crime.

A group of legal experts, with the support of Amnesty International and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR), have developed a set of Corporate Crime Principles to advance the investigation and prosecution of human rights cases.

“The inability and unwillingness of governments to meet their obligations under international law and stand up to rights-abusing companies sends the message that they are too powerful to prosecute,” said Seema Joshi, head of Amnesty’s of Business and Human Rights section. “No company, however powerful, should be above the law, yet in the last 15 years no country has put a company on trial after an NGO brought evidence of human rights related crimes abroad. The inability and unwillingness of governments to meet their obligations under international law and stand up to rights-abusing companies sends the message that they are too powerful to prosecute.”

The Corporate Crime Principles aim to address business involvement in a broad range of crimes linked to human rights abuses including forced labour, human trafficking, war crimes, economic crimes and environmental harm.

While they are aimed at governments and law enforcement officials in all countries, they highlight, in particular, cross-border crime where a business headquartered in one country is involved in criminal activity in another.

“Many of the documented cases implicate western corporations in serious human rights abuses in fragile or war-torn areas, and the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality of these companies’ governments exposes a deadly double standard,” Joshi said. “Though prosecution is far from perfect even in countries that are headquarters to global corporations, there is no way that authorities would be passive spectators if these alleged abuses were happening in New York, Vancouver, London, Paris or Beijing.”

Some national justice systems do not have jurisdiction over crimes committed by their companies in other countries.

And even where those laws do exist, the power and financial clout of corporations makes authorities reluctant to act.

This often means that there is total impunity for companies when they are involved in criminal activity overseas, Joshi said.

“It is shocking that in some of these cases victims still have not received redress for horrific crimes,” said ICAR’s Ammol Mehra. “For example, no government has done an adequate investigation into the alleged involvement of Australian-Canadian multinational Anvil Mining in the Kilwa massacre in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2004, in which government forces killed and tortured civilians.”

Last year, UK authorities admitted to Amnesty International that they do not have the tools, resources or expertise to investigate whether the London office of multinational commodities giant Trafigura conspired to dump toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006 – one of the worst corporate-created disasters of the 21st century.

Amnesty International and ICAR have documented 20 other examples where authorities have not prosecuted multinationals despite being provided with evidence of illegal conduct linked to serious human rights abuses in other countries.

“We need a sea-change in the approach of governments and law enforcement to these cases – corporate actors need to know that they will be held to account for corporate crimes and victims need to know that they will have justice for the harm caused,” Mehra said.

The principles highlight how political will and the commitment of law enforcement to tackling serious crimes can galvanize action in future cases.

Amnesty points to the successful prosecution in the Netherlands of Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat for war crimes for supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with chemicals used in chemical weapons attacks against the Kurds in 1987 and 1988.

The Dutch International Crimes Unit that brought the case is now widely recognized as one of the most effective and active units specializing in international crime.

“We need a sea-change in the approach of governments and law enforcement to these cases – corporate actors need to know that they will be held to account for corporate crimes and victims need to know that they will have justice for the harm caused,” Mehra said.