Recently, the Norway Pension Fund Global released its determinations involving three companies. They are unremarkable other than as evidence of the consistency of the Norwegian state, through this instrumentality, of signalling its continued policies, under cover of international law and norms. Two recommendations were focused on facilitation of war or occupation with respect t which Norway chose this way to intervene--(1) Russia (facilitation of the Russian war effort through dual use goods), and (2) Jewish Israel (telecommunications that facilitate the Israeli war effort), One focused on the successes of the active shareholder principle in cases of corporate cultures of corruption (this time South Korea). These interventions do not break new ground but they are interesting all the same for the way in which they restate and apply the standards that have become part of the bedrock jurisprudence of the Ethics Council and its working style.
(1) Evraz Plc is excluded from the Fund’s investments due to an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious violations of fundamental ethical norms. The Council considers that the risk that Evraz PLC is providing critically important steel to Russian weapon production to be unacceptable. The Council’s recommendation
here:Evraz PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange with a major presence in Russia where the company, inter alia, produces steel. The Council`s inquiries have shown that Evraz PLC may be linked to the Russian defense industry as a supplier of steel which enables Russia to continue its unlawful war of aggression against Ukraine. The Council has therefore contacted Evraz PLC numerous times with questions concerning the company`s engagement with the Russian defense industry. The company has failed to reply to the Council`s queries. On this basis, and in light of the cases described, the Council considers that the risk that Evraz PLC is providing critically important steel to Russian weapon production, is unacceptable.
Facilitation has become a potent theoretical vehicle for the rapid expansion of the concept of complicity from one narrowly constructed in law, to one that may reach to the ends of supply and production chains, and the regulator sees fit. In this sense there is a tight connection between compliance based regulatory structures like the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and its related regulatory schemes with the notions of risk and responsibility crafted through an broadened notion of responsibility through facilitation. This connects Evraz to the Hyundai Engineering determination discussed below.
The Council’s recommendation here.
(2) Bezeq The Israeli Telecommunications Corp is excluded from the Fund’s investments due to an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious violations of the rights of individuals in situations of war or conflict. Bezeq is an Israeli company that supplies telecommunications services to businesses and private individuals in Israel and the Israeli settlements in the West Bank.The Council's recommendation may be accessed here.
Bezeq is an Israeli company that supplies telecommunications services to businesses and private individuals in Israel and the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Council notes the company’s assertion that it also provides telecom services to Palestinian areas in the West Bank. However, the Council does not consider this to outweigh the fact that the company, through its physical presence and provision of telecom services to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, is helping to facilitate the maintenance and expansion of these settlements, which are illegal under international law. By doing so, the company is itself contributing to the violation of international law.
This is perhaps the most interesting of the three cases precisely because of the way that the Ethics Council and the Norges Bank applied it balancing tests, in this case potentially creating greater challenges for the Palestinian households receiving service form Bezeq. Much of the reasoning repeats the now well settled political decisions of the Norwegian state, translated, as is now expected ractice within the cultural realms of international relations, in a language of or subsumed within te linguistic patterning and meaning complexes of law One speaks most authoritatively nowadays when one invokes legal totems and wraps oneself within its constructed meanings (
Ethics Council Recommendation, pp. 4-13). This os not to suggest right or wrong--only that this ritualization of legal invocation to leverage up political decisions has become the common parlance of public techno-bureaucratic elites , one that conveys a particular set of meanings and also of solidarity with a governance or elite community. ,In this case however this ritualized invocation becomes an essential element of the way in which the Norwegian state attempts to undertake, or better put, justify, a balancing that, in its own mind in aid of Palestinian liberation as they see it, they also are willing to tolerate a bit of Palestinian suffering. All for a good cause--to make the lives of demonized so-called settlers more uncomfortable (ibid., Section 5). The Jews have got to go for the preservation of a Jew free Palestine that as a result of which will be incapable of being an apartheid State. The settlers, as a whole (for it seems Jews are incapable of individuality) are no better than the liberation forces involved in "the terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October." To those grand ends in the service of a slew of international pronouncements around which the reasoning is wrapped, a bit of suffering for Palestinian may be a necessary predicate condition--at least from the comfort of Oslo. Who knows. perhaps this is a necessary tonic for a purified and Jew-free Palestine existing, in its own way, as a fully sovereign and autonomous State. alongside a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Israeli state. That is a political decision well beyond my capacity to judge--and it certainly appears to be the consensus of those who are empowered to make good on their determination of the proper places and spaces for Jews and others in that small geographical space. What is interesting is the way in which law, legal forms, and the semiotics of their utilization in meaning making have become decisive elements in the transformation of the language of politics and policy. The rest is politics about which I have nothing to say here.
Tthe Council’s recommendation here. (3) The observation of Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co Ltd (HDEC) is discontinued, as the Council considers that the risk of gross corruption in the company’s operations no longer is unacceptable.
Please find the Council’s recommendation to discontinue the observation here.
HDEC is one of the largest construction companies in South Korea. In
July 2021, the company was placed under observation based on allegations
or suspicions of corruption in Algeria, South Korea and Indonesia in
the period 2008–2018, as well as the company’s involvement in widespread
bid rigging and illegal price collusion in South Korea between 2005 and
2013. The Council considered that HDEC had not taken the various
allegations seriously enough and that much remained to be developed and
implemented with respect to the company’s systems and procedures for the
prevention and detection of corruption. Throughout the observation period, the Council has had the impression
that HDEC’s efforts to prevent, detect and deal with corruption have
steadily improved, and the Council’s assessment now is that the company
seems to have put in place an anti-corruption system that, in most
areas, aligns with internationally recognised recommendations. Also,
during the observation period, the Council has not uncovered any new
allegations of corruption relating to the company’s business.
Here, compliance based monitoring is well illustrated. Also well illustrated is the continuing merger of surveillance and compliance techno-bureaucracies within the administrative apparatus of states and the monitoring apparatus of large private companies. This is a very necessary element, and a critical predicate, the successful transition from classical liberal democratic law state ideals, to those of the managerialism of micro-behaviors through interlocking networks of techno-bureaucracies, increasingly aided by machine learning, descriptive and predicative analytics (some of which increasingly self-generating). Agaun, there is no right or wrong, there is merely an inevitable movement that then challenges the very foundations of the idealized vision of liberal democratic accountability through other rituals (that of elections of representative with the authority to undertake effective governance), where the rituals of elections and representation become increasingly detached form the actualities of the exercise of power through discretionary decision making by techno bureaucrats, the foundational authority for which may lie in regulation, but the effective scope and parameters of decision making is embedded in the actualities of compliance. T
he Council’s recommendation here.
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