The Lundin Oil War Crimes Trial: A Watershed Moment for Corporate Accountability

Abstract

In September 2023, the Lundin Oil War Crimes Trial began in Stockholm, marking the first use of universal jurisdiction to hold a corporate officer accountable for war crimes. Swedish Chairman Ian Lundin and Swiss CEO Alexandre Schneiter stand accused of being complicit in atrocities committed by the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied militias in order to clear concession Block 5A of its civilian population and create the conditions necessary for oil exploration. Given that transnational corporations have long been involved in human rights abuses and violations of international law, this thesis seeks to understand why the Lundin case is the first of its kind. I propose two hypotheses to explain this novel prosecution, one related to the unique character and capacity of the Swedish criminal justice system, and the second related to the advocacy and evidence collection efforts of NGOs. Relying on primary source analysis and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders to test these hypotheses, I find that both are true. Sweden’s strong safeguards of prosecutorial independence, specialized units dedicated to investigating and prosecuting international crimes, broad interpretation of customary international law, liberal exercise of universal jurisdiction, and low mens rea threshold for criminal complicity were all instrumental in bringing the Lundin case to trial. At the same time, NGOs’ reporting efforts, transnational advocacy campaigns, and witness identification and protection programs were decisive in jumpstarting the Swedish criminal investigation and gathering the evidence necessary to indict the corporate executives. Ultimately, this thesis argues that these two factors worked in conjunction to bring about the Lundin trial, offering valuable lessons for future corporate accountability efforts.