ICC Note: With all the devastation, terror and persecution that Sudanese from the embattled Darfur region have experienced, restitution has been difficult to access. One year ago, French bank BNP Paribas pled guilty to illegal business transacted with the Sudanese government to the tune of 6.4 billion dollars during the early 2000s when Sudan was ethnically cleansing Darfur. Restitution applications may be filed online, but the program expires July 30 and is supposedly underpublicized. All of this just adds insult to injury for a population, mostly made up of black Christians, who have been subject to rape, human rights abuses, mass killings and genocide, and the Sudanese state is responsible. The International Criminal Court has charged Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir for genocide for perpetrating the Darfur crisis.
By Eric Reeves
7/14/15, Sudan (The New York Times) – It is now a year since the guilty plea by BNP Paribas, the French banking giant, to charges by the Department of Justice that it had done clandestine business with the governments of Sudan, Iran and Cuba, countries that were subject to economic sanctions. Over the period covered in the indictment, from 2004 to 2012, the amount that was criminally laundered came to more than $8.8 billion, which determined the size of the penalty.
The bulk of these illegal transactions — about $6.4 billion, or more than 70 percent — involved Sudan, whose president, Omar al-Bashir, was indicted in 2009-10 by the International Criminal Court for multiple counts of crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur. The people of Sudan, who continue to suffer terribly under Mr. Bashir’s regime, deserve a significant portion of the penalty assessed.
The most effective way of delivering this restitution would be in the form of increased humanitarian assistance. This could be quickly organized by the United States Agency for International Development.
But what has happened to the $8.97 billion that BNP paid for its criminal actions?
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