A new U.S. law that requires oil, gas and mining companies to report publicly their payments to third world governments is the most positive news the poorer parts of the world have had in many years. The requirement to Publish What You Pay will give independent radio stations and human rights organizations across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia more facts to expose the billions of dollars that oil giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron pay their governments. Here is my account in The Nation about this important step forward.
Regular visitors to this site may be interested to learn that the neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz makes a guest appearance in the article — not as the manipulator who helped the Bush administration lie its way into the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, but in his next incarnation, as (briefly) president of the World Bank, where an African oil dictator played him for a complete sucker.
jeeze louise james, you could have blockquoted a tad of your excellent article for us, just for the hoot of it.
james, i was pleasantly surprised to hear this news, and wonder 1. why does the law only apply to energy and mining companies; and 2. how does this fit into the foreign corrupt practices act scheme and the OECD convention on combating bribery of foreign public officials … etc. etc. (i thought that companies that were subject to the FCPA and OECD convention, of which the US is a signatory, already had to maintain accountings and implement protocols for reporting their expenditures in foreign countries.)
Marc: Excellent questions, both. 1) I’m not sure of the answer, but I suspect political realities are the explanation. It was hard enough to pass legislation for oil and mining companies, without stirring up opposition from even more global businesses.
2) Big oil and the mining companies are good at disguising what are in fact “bribes.” If they pay for the schooling of the president’s family members, or hire his brother’s security company to protect their installations, these may look like genuine payments.
The new law does not outlaw these payments; it simply requires the companies to make them public, with the unstated hope that social movements in both the countries affected and in the West will then apply public pressure. As I point out in the Nation article, the New York Times occasionally writes about corruption in Equatorial Guinea, somehow without even mentioning Exxon.
It’s just a US law, so a lot of big companies will not be affected, but it is an excellent start.
More companies than one might think are affected. The law covers companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, so it also includes BP, BHP Billiton and many others that may seem “non-American” — some 1100 in all.
So if (e.g.) BHP refuses to say what bribes they paid, they get excluded from US stock exchanges? That is quite a severe sanction.