A meeting of participants in the Kimberley Process has begun in Namibia amid doubts that the initiative is stemming trade in conflict diamonds.

To justify their concerns, rights groupsincluding Global Witness point to abuses of the scheme in Zimbabwe, and Venezuela's two-year withdrawal from the process to address compliance problems.

According to AFP, "Under Kimberley, rough diamonds are sealed in tamper-resistant containers and required to have forgery-resistant, conflict-free certificates with unique serial numbers each time they cross an international border."

But in January a mission by Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) found that Venezuela was still exporting diamonds despite the country's suspension from the process, implicating other process member states in the illicit diamond trade.

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In Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa, hard earned victories in anti-corruption efforts are running aground.

In APEsphere we have been following closely the Nigerian's government's half-hearted attempts to track down the recipients of bribes paid by Halliburton subsidiary KBR in aid of winning a contract to build a major liquified natural gas facility.

The lack of commitment, however, is evident elsewhere in other crucial states on the continent. This analysis from the New York Times provides details.

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There are stories once again of contaminated baby formula in China: Scient brand milk powder has apparently been found to have 100 times the acceptable level of melamine in it.  The allegations are under investigation and the company has no comment at the moment.  Executives at Scient have good reason to be anxious about the outcome of the investigation: let's not forget that tainted milk is an offense punishable by death in China.

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Fifteen years after the execution of Nigerian human rights campaigners including Ken Saro-Wiwa, the families have settled with Shell Oil for $19.5 million.

The families of those killed maintain that Shell was complicit in the punishment metered out to the campaigners by the government. They brought their legal action under the Alient Tort Claims Act.

In agreeing to the settlement Shell admits no wrongdoing, instead maintaining that the settlement is being made to aid the "process of reconciliation".

According to the Financial Times report. $5 million of the award will go into a trust fund to aid the people of the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta, an area that has suffered the full brunt of Nigeria's "resource curse".

The plaintiff's lawyers commented that this settlement represented another building block in establishing the liability of multinational corporations for human rights abuses committed abroad.

While a settlement does little to establish a principle, perhaps the ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York last week will at least make one step in the process easier next time: it held that Shell's Nigerian subsidiary - Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria - has sufficient US connections to be tried in a US court.

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Really, you've gotta read Michael Moore's eulogy for General Motors in the Huffington Post.

My favorite bit: "Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes."

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Nigeria's Business Day runs through the repercussions for Halliburton and other multinationals of ongoing legal actions over bribery schemes.

The investigation, which combines separate investigations in the US, France, UK and Nigeria, sets a precedent which, Business Day argues, should disincentivize foreign companies from such high level corruption in the future.

The report analyzes the potential implications of the investigation for former US vice president Dick Cheney, Royal Dutch Shell, and France's Technip.

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The trial of Royal Dutch Shell for its role in the death of Nigerain author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa is set to begin Wednesday in New York.  The company is also accused of maintaining armed forces to perpetrate human rights abuses in the Niger delta. 

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Dell has introduced a company ban on the export of broken computers, monitors and parts to developing countries to tackle the e-waste problem.

According to India's Economic Times:

"lax enforcement of environmental and worker-safety regulations have allowed an informal and often hazardous electronic-waste recycling industry to emerge."

Dell's public stand on the issue has been lauded by environmental groups including the Electronics Takeback Coalition.

Question: as I understand it developing countries are pretty good at patching up broken electronics and putting them back into use, with bloth environmental and economic development benefits as people can get hold of workable IT for much less than it would cost to buy something new. Is Dell's position the right way to tackle the toxic waste problem (which is undoubtedly severe), or does it risk forcing people in developing countries to purchase expensive new kit?

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BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defence company, had to answer shareholder concerns about company ethics at its annual meeting on Tuesday.

According to the Times report, BAe is subject to Serious Fraud Office investigations ofthe company's arms sales into South Africa, the Czech Republic, Tanzania and Romania. Meanwhile, BAe is also the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Justice.

Dick Olver, the chairman, stated that good progress was being made on improving ethical standards, but when questioned by an arms sales campaigner and investor appeared to say that whatever the company had done had been done to support the men and women on the front line. Note that does not necessarily mean our men and women on a front line that should matter to us politically, just whoever happens to be on the receiving end of the arms sales.

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Law firm Foley & Lardner LLP has written an article providing guidance to firms using agents to secure business in countries with poor governance.

Halliburton was the subject of an enforcement action by the SEC under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for record keeping and internal control failures. At the same time, a subsidiary of Halliburton's then subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc was subject to an enforcement action by the US Department of Justice in relation to bribes paid to Nigerian government officials to secure a contract to develop an oil facility.

Halliburton and KBR settled the actions jointly, agreeing to disgorge $177 million of profits. KBR's subsidiary paid $402 million in fines.

This Foley & Lardner LLP article looks at the lessons US corporations should learn to avoid ending up in the same position as Halliburton did here. It is therefore not examining KBR's criminal conduct, but rather Halliburton's liability in relation to actions taken abroad by a subsidiary.

The article is useful because it makes the facts of the Halliburton case clear, and because it brings home to US corporations the fact that enforcement of the FCPA is being pursued with an eye for "substance over form". You cannot get around the FCPA by relying on an overseas subsidiary to do the dirty work.

This is a good thing.

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