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People who have
suffered the impact of unjust practices and those who have been victims
of abuse from corporate impunity will heave a sigh of relief the day
directors of such companies are brought to court from behind their
corporate shields. The spins and the twists in legal tangos that play
out so impassively will become a thing of the past.

Whereas
corporations do not sweat in the dock, their directors, who are human
like the rest of us, may. It is also possible that pleas from the dock
would be couched in humane terms and that actions and reactions would
become more or less equal as they usually are in physical matters.

In sum, people would sense that justice is reachable in many cases of confrontation between them and corporate entities.

These are some of
the hopes being raised by the possibility of top guns at BP being
charged for manslaughter over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of April
2010. If this happens, it will send a strong signal to leaders of
companies that expose their workers to extreme personal risks.

It will also send
signals to companies engaged in reckless activities that severely
impact people and degrade their environment. In addition, it will offer
a glimpse to what may become the norm if an international environment
or climate crimes tribunal is set up for cases of ecocide.

It has been
reported that investigators are pawing over documents and emails that
may indicate whether Tony Hayward, former BP chief executive, and other
top management officers made decisions or played key roles in what led
to arguably the most horrendous environmental disaster in US history.
That incident killed 11 workers and spewed yet unknown barrels of crude
oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The internal
investigation carried out by BP immediately after the disaster showed
that their managers misread pressure data and authorised workers of the
Deep Water Horizon rig to replace drilling fluid in the well with
seawater – one of the moves in cost cutting suspected to have triggered
the disaster.

BP has admitted to having made some mistakes but sticks to the claim that they were not ‘grossly’ negligent.

There is something
quite gross about that word ‘gross’ before the word ‘negligence’. If it
sticks, the possible fines to be slapped on BP may rise from about $5
billion to $21 billion. It will also complicate things for BP in their
dealings with the partners on the rig, as they seek to share the costs
of the clean up expected to reach about $42 billion.

The significance of
this case would also be found in the fact that the directors of BP
would be unable to hide behind the corporate shield, as is often the
case with corporate entities who are persons before the law only for as
much as capacity to earn income is concerned; and are phantoms when it
comes to responsibility for acts of impunity.

Think how
instructive it would have been to line up the directors of Chevron for
the environmental crimes in the Ecuadorian Amazonia or those of Shell,
Exxon, Chevron, Agip and the rest for their human rights and ecocide in
the Niger Delta. If manslaughter charges are pressed against officials
of BP, then the days of companies only being fined and the directors
avoiding the dock will soon become history.

Obviously, BP and
other corporations will not take kindly to this move. Their arsenal is
loaded with tools with which to frustrate legal procedures. Some of
them have batteries of lawyers with whom they harass hapless victims
and keep the wheels of legal suits spinning.

There is no need to
wonder how come corporations have got away with murder all the time.
One fact is that governments have over the years become largely
privatised in the sense that they depend on corporations for revenue
and for monetised solutions to virtually every problem.

While suing
directors of companies may be a daunting prospect, considering their
propensity to keep cases dragging endlessly, it is nevertheless a
necessary step towards giving companies a truly human face and maybe a
human heart.

We cannot avoid
reaching the conclusion that companies behave in a heartless manner
because they are fashioned to be unaccountable and can carry out
inhuman acts without blinking an eyelid.

Are you not struck
by the fact that oil company leaders are ordinarily nice and personable
persons, but that this genial nature changes once they put on their
corporate toga?