Often when someone fights against accountability, they make their opponent's case for them.

Take three recent instances:

Attempts by British oil trading firm Trafigura to gag the Guardian newspaper from reporting on a question posed by a MP in Parliament about the company's existing secret gagging order preventing the newspaper from reporting on Trafigura's dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast. Had Trafigura succeeded in preventing reporting on the parliamentary question, it would have represented a stunning override of parliamentary privilege. The attempt was undermined effectively by people on twitter who took it upon themselves to make the question public.

Then there is the reaction of UK-listed and based Vedanta Resources to being told by the UK National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises that the company had failed to consult on or look out for the interests of local people regarding its plans to construct a bauxite mine in Orissa, India. According to India's Business Standard, Mukesh Kumar, chief operating officer of VAL's Lanjigarh project responded:

“We condemn the findings of the UK-based agency. Our bauxite mining project at Niyamgiri hills has been cleared by the Supreme Court, the highest judicial authority in India. It is inappropriate for the agency of any other country to comment on a project being developed in India”

Even where that company is rooted in and takes advantage of capital markets in that other country?

Then there are the mounting attempts by corporations to shift their tax residence elsewhere from their actual base of operations in order to avoid tax (prompting this response from the UK tax authority) .

As corporations take ever greater liberties with the reach of democratic accountability, they make the case for global or at least extra-territorial regulation.

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