U.S. jury issues $20 million verdict against France’s largest bank over Sudanese atrocities

The woman and two men who obtained the ruling against BNP Paribas are American citizens who left Sudan after being displaced and losing their homes and property. They each received amounts between $6.7 million and $7.3 million on Friday after jurors deliberated for about four hours.

In a preliminary filing dated August 28, prosecutors argued that BNP Paribas helped the Sudanese government “carry out one of the worst campaigns of persecution in modern history.”

“They are very pleased that steps toward justice have been made, and they are pleased to hold the bank accountable for its abhorrent behavior,” their lawyer, Adam Levitt, said Saturday.

A BNP Paribas spokesman said in an email that the finding was “clearly wrong and there are very strong grounds for appealing the ruling” and that the bank had not been allowed to present important evidence.

The bank said Sudan had other sources of money and that the company did not intentionally help the government engage in human rights violations under former President Omar al-Bashir.

BNP Paribas granted Sudanese authorities access to international financial markets from at least 2002 to 2008. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million displaced from their homes in the Darfur region over the years. The lawsuit concerns government actions in many parts of the country.

Al-Bashir’s lawyer said earlier this month that Al-Bashir is being held in a military-run detention center in northern Sudan. He has been charged by the International Criminal Court with crimes including genocide, but has not been extradited to face justice in The Hague. Sudan slid into civil war more than two years ago, sparking what relief organizations described as one of the worst displacement and hunger crises in the world.

Lawyers for the French bank said it bore no responsibility, saying in a lawsuit in August that “the human rights violations in Sudan did not begin with BNBB, did not end when BNBB left Sudan, and were not caused by BNBB.”

BNP Paribas “was never involved in Sudanese military transactions in any way — it never financed Sudan’s purchase of weapons, and there is no evidence linking any specific transaction to Plaintiffs’ injuries,” they wrote.

Levitt, the plaintiffs’ attorney, described the case as a “groundbreaking trial” with results he hopes to apply to other Sudanese refugees, 23,000 American citizens, who are members of this class action case.

The BNP spokesman said the ruling was specific to the three plaintiffs and “should not have broader application beyond this decision.”

In 2014, BNP Paribas agreed to pay nearly $9 billion to settle the case by pleading guilty in New York and admitting that it processed billions of dollars in transactions for clients in Sudan as well as Cuba and Iran.