A US judge has ruled that BNP Paribas must be sued for the genocide in Sudan

A US judge ordered BNP Paribas to appear in court on Thursday in response to a lawsuit alleging the French bank assisted the government of Sudan in committing genocide from 1997 to 2011 by offering banking services that were against US sanctions.

There are “too many facts” that US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan determined link BNP Paribas’ funding to government-perpetrated violations of human rights.

He referred to it as premature to determine whether it was reasonable to hold the bank accountable for mass rape, torture, and murder, among other abuses, as reported by the plaintiffs, or if it might have been reasonably expected.

US citizens who had fled non-Arab indigenous black African communities in South Sudan, Darfur, and the central Sudanese Nuba Mountains filed the proposed class action lawsuit. They are requesting a vague amount of damages.

A representative for BNP Paribas chose not to respond.

In order to resolve US accusations that it transferred billions of dollars for Sudanese, Iranian, and Cuban companies under economic sanctions, the bank had to enter a guilty plea and pay a $8.97 billion fine in 2014.

The Department of Justice stated at the time that BNP Paribas’ guilty plea was the first by a global bank to large-scale violations of US economic sanctions, despite the fact that many banks have been accused of supporting human rights abuses through the provision of banking services.

According to Hellerstein, the bank could no longer make a different argument after acknowledging that its staff members understood their part in providing Sudanese companies with access to the US banking system.

In 2004, the US government declared the Sudanese conflict to be a genocide.

The complaint was first filed in 2016, and a decision was made on Thursday.

The lawsuit was dismissed by a different judge in 2018, but it was brought back in 2019 by a federal appeals court.