US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a dinner last week for the tech industry's key leaders. It looks to me like the consolidation of a trend.

I attended a talk a few years back and I am struggling to recall where it was. It was either in Boston or in Washington. Anyway the talk was given by a recently retired general counsel of a mahor corporation - perhaps IBM, perhaps GM. The main argument of the talk was that corporations need a foreign policy. I thought the idea was instantly exciting and terrifying.

Exciting because back then I had recently written a paper on "Legitimacy risks and peacebuilding opportunities for businesses in post-conflict Iraq". The fact is that businesses have presence, relationships and power and they will have an impact on communities and even nations whether they have a policy or not.
 

Terrifying because, as that paper had tried to make clear, legitimacy was key, and in the Iraq situation the absence of inclusiveness and accountability pretty much assured that the reconstruction effort would lack local goodwill. Think about how the reconstruction contracts were allocated, the absence of community involvement in allocation, the lack contract winners of Iraqi origin, then the failure of firms that undertook the work to do so from the outset with a solid local outreach and inclusion approach.

There are plenty of extractive industry firms with a substantial involvement in foreign affairs, too often with dubious and opaque relationships supporting regimes run by corrupt elites.

It is the global technology firm - particularly though not exclusively the internet-based firms - that is new to the art of running aground on foreign policy issues in most recent years. So I was very interested to hear about a small private dinner hosted by Hilary Clinton last week with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie. The subject under discussion: how technology can be used to meet the nation’s foreign diplomacy goals.

It is a topic I touched on here during the first major upheavals in Iran when twitter played such a role: Iran, business models and the right to tweet speech. The basic argument of that post - that access to twitter is crucial to freedom of speech - has been echoed in a State Departent blog post which said the agency wanted to use twitter in a contest as a:

"worldwide platform in which people can discuss the meaning of democracy and exchange ideas from diverse perspectives."

My thoughts/questions are these:

1/ Is corporate foreign policy simply an alternate name for existing corporate responsibility issues with a global hue, like climate change or, in the internet company case privacy issues? Or is it - and I believe it is - something more, where corproations are taking on a responsibility to consider their impact on human rights within their sphere of activity in a more accountable, thus perhaps quasi-public way?

2/ how do we assure legitimacy? How can we bring the right kind of transparency and inclusivity to corporate statecraft to ensure that it is just?

3/ global corporations are based in dozens of countries. Is there a question of to which foreign policy it needs to align its own?

Do you have any views?

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So after a week-long brouhaha Apple Inc has decided to permit the release of a new iPhone application called iSinglePayer.

The application enables users to see which US legislators have received political contributions from which limb of the anti-healthcare-reform lobby, and then to phone up the representative at the touch of a button. The application's data is supplied by the Center for Responsive Politics.

The link between industry money and political process has never been more transparent.

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Paranoia strikes deep in the heartland
But I think it's all overdone
Exaggerating this and exaggerating that
They don't have no fun

Paul Simon, "Have a good time"

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Tomorrow the phone maker will release two new phone models which boast a 15% reduction in carbon footprint.

According to the Guardian report, the phones' environmental credentials are achieved by "cutting packaging, using recycled plastics and reducing the use of solvents in the paints".

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An investigative report by Francine McKenna at re:The Auditors raises conflict of interest questions about PwC's IT implementation business.

Auditor independence is essential to audit work, but some of the Big 4 audit firms - or at least some of their partners - are not happy with their cosy oligopoly and want a piece of the more lucrative consulting and big project (especially IT) implementation market. That might be fine if they were not offering consultancy to clients they were also auditing, or auditing clients that they hoped to get consultancy work from.

Satyam, the Indian IT outsourcing company, housed one of the biggest accounting frauds discovered over the last year, and PwC was the auditor. In the report Francine reviews what appears to have been a strategic relationship between PwC and Satyam for the delivery of IT implementation services to PwC's IT consultancy clients.

Time to clamp down again on auditor independence?

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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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The FT reports that Intel faces a fine of over one billion euros ($1.36 billion) this week for anti-competitive marketing practices.

The practices in question concerned offering PC manufacturers illegal rebates for using Intel chips, effectively cutting rival AMD out of the market. The company is also accused of agreeing with a major European retailer to provide rebates in return for the retailer only stocking personal computers containing Intel chips.

European Commissioners meet Wednesday to decide how to proceed against Intel.

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Under pressure to bring to justice those bribed by agents of Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the Nigerian government has convened a panel.

The background to the case can be read here.

KBR and its former Chief Executive Albert Jack Stanley have pleaded guilty to offences related to bribing Nigerian officials in order to secure a contract to construct a liquified natural gas facility in the country. Nigeria has so far taken no action against those Nigerians who were bribed.

According to the Daily Independent report, the panel comprises:

"the heads of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), State Security Services (SSS), and the Inspector General of Police."

The panel will also probe cases involving Siemens and Willbross.

The Nigerian Bar Association has described the panel as a "cover-up".

Meanwhile, the Swiss have confirmed they will assist Nigeria in the recovery of $150 million of Halliburton bribes currently held in Swiss bank accounts.

According to an article in The Punch, however, the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Micheline Clamy-Rey, stated:

"Nigeria only needs to take advantage of the opportunity of the Mutual Legal Assistance existing between both countries to request for the reparation of the funds.

...

She said, “Halliburton money of about $150m is blocked in Zurich, but the Mutual Legal Assistance existing between the two countries allows Nigeria to request, and we are ready to assist Nigeria.”"

So have members of the Nigerian government been careful not to ask?

An article in This Day article reports comments by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Chief Mike Aondoakaa, to the effect that:

"the money had been trapped in Zurich because it had been difficult to establish the operator of the account but warned that no government official found culpable would be speared. He however did not state categorically who found it difficult to ascertain the account's owner - whether the Nigerian government or officials of the unnamed bank."

None of which provides any confidence that the Nigerian government sees it as being in its interest to get to bring the Halliburton bribees to justice, or to bring the bribe money back into the public coffer instead of private Swiss accounts.

A Voice of America article includes interview remarks by a Nigerian professor of political science at the University of Abuja:

"Some reports attributed to the Nigerian media and NGOs said former Nigerian presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar and the late Sani Abacha are among those who accepted bribes.

Mohamed said while the names of the three former presidents have not been made known in Nigeria, nevertheless there have been speculations to that effect.

"Most people have shoved with the wave of a hand that once it involves Olusegun Obasanjo, there is nothing that is going to be done. The present government is a stooge of the former president," Mohamed said."

Mohamed adds his own voice to those who think the new Halliburton probe will do nothing but tackle a few of the small fish.

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Companies merely doing business with the regime in South Africa had their lawsuits dismissed. That left those who provided tools for repression.

According to the plaintiffs, the car manufacturers Daimler, Ford and General Motors knew their cars were to be used to suppress dissent. IBM knew its IT systems were to being used to strip people of their rights. The action can also proceed against Rheinmetall Group, which owns an armaments maker.

These actions under the Alien Tort Claims Act are to be permitted to proceed. The cases against them describe classic examples of what we at APEsphere refer to as the "use chain". In other words, as the BBC report put its: "The judge disagreed with IBM's argument that it was not the company's place to tell clients how to use its products."

Claims against banks Barclays and UBS were dismissed.

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The UN's multi-stakeholder forum for corporate responsibility has appointed a convicted Korean accounting fraudster to its board.

Chey Tae-won, who happens to head up Korea's SK Corporation and is one of Korea's richest people, served just three months of a three year prison sentence and was pardoned with 73 other convicted business leaders last year. These pardons aimed "to overcome the serious economic difficulty and ensure that investment can be made and many jobs created."

George Kell, who runs the UNGC, put a brave face on the appointment when questioned at a meeting held for the release of the Compact's annual report, suggesting that the Compact - far from a reserve of angels - is a place where people are encouraged to learn from their mistakes.

Having once been convicted, the onus is surely on Chey to prove that he is doing so. Is he? Even before his pardon last year he was advocating for deregulation o enhance competitiveness. This week, however, his firm announced a major deal with unions (unions are not known to be soft in Korea) whereby union members promised not to vote for a pay rise until the economy was stronger, and the company promised not to make anyone redundant by compulsion.

One joker commented at the Compact meeting that Bernie Madoff might make a good board member on the same criteria. Chey Tae-won has much to prove if the UN Global Compact is to ever become more than everyone's favorite letterhead logo.

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