The French cement giant Lafarge, now a part of the LafargeHolcim group, is one of several international companies which have been pursued for complicity in crimes against humanity, though most cases have been abandoned.
Here are some other key cases:
- Shell and Nigeria -
Twelve Nigerians living in the United States took the Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell to court in 2009 over allegations of torture and other human rights abuses in the Niger delta between 1992 and 1995.
But in 2013 the US Supreme Court ruled that the US legal system could not pursue companies suspected of human rights violations abroad.
- Total and Myanmar -
In 2008 Belgium's Appeals Court dropped a legal case brought by refugees from Myanmar targeting the French oil group Total, which they accused of crimes against humanity.
In a long-running case, the refugees accused Total of having provided logistic and financial support to Myanmar's military junta, which they hold responsable for forced labour, deportations, murder, arbitrary executions and torture.
Total has also faced legal action in France but authorities dismissed in 2006 a case regarding forced labour brought by Myanmar refugees.
- SNCF and the Holocaust -
In 2007 France's top administrative court said it did not have the legal jurisidiction to rule on the responsibility of the state rail company SNCF for its role in the deportation of Jews during World War II.
Requisitioned by the Nazi regime in Germany, the SNCF transported 76,000 Jews across France to death camps from 1942 to 1944. About 3,000 survived, according to the French rail company.
In 2014 France and the United States signed an agreement creating a fund with $60 million paid by France to victims of the Holocaust, mainly those who had obtained American citizenship, who were transported by train from France to Nazi death camps.
The affair nearly cost the SNCF its US contracts.
- Conglomerates in Nazi Germany -
There were convictions in three cases filed by the United States between 1947 and 1949 against German industrial groups for crimes against humanity during World War II.
Friedrich Flick, founder of the Flick conglomerate Flick, was sentenced to seven years in prison for putting concentration camp prisoners to work and benefiting from the plundering of Jews.
Twelve managers at IG Farben, which made poisonous gas used in the Nazi death chambers, were also handed prison sentences.
And a dozen former managers at the steel-maker Krupp were handed jail sentences of three to 12 years for providing weapons to the Nazis and using forced labour.
IG Farben was dissolved by decree in 1950 but its liquidation came to an end only in 2003.
Even though they were not pursued by the courts, several other German companies subsequently recognised their responsibility in crimes committed by the Nazi regime.
rap-roc/eab/br/js/ach
LAFARGEHOLCIM
TOTAL
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC
