‘From Nuremberg to Kabuga’

Abstract

In September 2022, the international criminal trial of Félicien Kabuga for participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide began in a courtroom in The Hague. Kabuga’s trial is noteworthy, not only as it is probably one of the last international criminal trials arising from the genocidal scheme that saw 800,000 Tutsis murdered, but also because Kabuga is not accused of directly participating in the killings but facilitating and enabling them through his various business enterprises.1 Kabuga’s trial is a rare moment in the history of international criminal law that sees a businessman being held accountable for his involvement in atrocity crimes. To understand the 75þ years’ history of international criminal law (ICL) that have led to this point and why having a businessman being tried for international crimes is such a rare occurrence, there is no better book than Joanna Kyriakakis’ Corporations, Accountability and International Criminal Law: Industry and Atrocity. ‘There is a problem with the global economy’, Kyriakakis begins, that of a ‘governance gap’ identified by John Ruggie – the lack of effective regulation of transnational corporations. Addressing that problem serves as the framing and impetus for the book. On this basis, Kyriakakis has produced a timely and important contribution to the increasing literature around corporate accountability through hard-law mechanisms for egregious human rights abuses. From Nuremberg to Kabuga, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the key moments when ICL has been used to try and hold companies, and individuals within them, accountable for ‘atrocity crimes’. Kyriakakis weaves legal commentary into each section as well as critical analysis of the key jurisprudential, sociolegal and political debates that surround the core animating question of the book: ‘what is the appropriate role to be played by atrocity law in addressing corporate wrongs?’ The historical review of ICL’s treatment of corporate defendants begins with the postWorld War II period (in chapter 2). Both German and Japanese companies were accused of actively participating and abetting in war crimes. The chapter devotes considerable space to the treatment of corporate actors at Nuremberg – widely seen as the founding moment of modern-day ICL. The absence of an industrialist in the primary International Military Tribunal is discussed as well as subsequent trials of corporate leaders in the trials held by each of the Allies in each of their German occupation zones. The inclusion of how Russian and French authorities treated economic actors, as well as the treatment (or lack thereof) of the Japanese zaibatsu conglomerates in the Tokyo war crimes trials – are useful