Commodity traders’ catalogue of sins: Analysis of 20 legal cases shows range of offences – and Swiss legal loopholes!

Zurich, Lausanne, 17. September 2024

From A for Addax to V for Vitol, from 2004 to the present day: Public Eye presents the first comprehensive overview detailing legal cases against Swiss commodity companies. In the light of the imminent court hearings involving Trafigura and a former employee from Gunvor in Bellinzona, Switzerland, the 20 legal cases outlined in this collection in detail highlight the increasingly urgent need for action in Bern. A commodity market supervisory authority (ROHMA), which Public Eye has been demanding for exactly 10 years, must finally put this Swiss high-risk sector on a tight leash and protect producers, consumers and competitors from illegal practices.
© Jean-Philppe Kalonji

Home to numerous multinational companies that mine and trade energy sources, metals or agricultural commodities around the globe, Switzerland has repeatedly become involved in human rights violations, environmental offences or corrupt business practices. Given the increasing number of national and international proceedings against Geneva or Zug based commodity companies, Swiss politicians, authorities and media can easily have problems to keep up. This is why Public Eye now offers some guidance by providing a description of 20 court and similar cases, with some dating a long way back and others red-hot. Every single example where a Swiss commodities company has been caught in illegal activities is linked to original sources and includes a timeline. As a conclusion in each case, the loopholes in the Swiss and international legal systems are exposed.

The investigations by the UK Serious Fraud Office into Glencore’s activities in South Sudan, for example, where the delivery of suitcases filled with money at the cash desk of the Swiss headquarters paved the way for lucrative commodity deals, expose a whole series of legal loopholes. Late 2022, the Zug-based group was ordered to pay GBP 280 million for its activities in South Sudan and other countries. The international proceedings against Chiquita, which is domiciled near Lake Geneva, date back to the 2000s and resulted recently in a verdict issued in the United States ordering the payment of USD 38 million in damages to the families of eight victims killed by the paramilitaries in Colombia (co-financed by the banana company). And then there is the corruption affair involving the Brazilian oil company Petrobras, which has been making headlines around the world since 2014, featuring the involvement of three Swiss trading groups. Two of them were ordered to pay fines running into hundreds of millions for a whole range of bribery offences.

The diversity and complexity of these three cases, illustrated by the Geneva artist Kalonji, exemplify the breadth of our elaborately investigated catalogue of sins committed by the Swiss commodities sector. The proceedings, some of them still ongoing, and their consequences not only for production countries but also for Switzerland’s reputation, underscore the need for a commodities market supervisory authority, short ROHMA. This high-risk sector has become a key Swiss economic factor and is steadily gaining geopolitical importance. Therefore, it’s also in the international interest that the existing rules are observed. The cases we have investigated highlight the urgent need for a ROHMA, which Public Eye has been calling for since September 2014, so as to make the commodities market fairer and curb criminal practices, thereby protecting Switzerland’s image abroad.

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