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ABSTRACT
Post-war situations can present an opportune context for white-collar crime in resource sectors – including corruption, tax evasion, land dispossession, and illegal resource exploitation. This paper investigates various forms of white-collar crime and associated human rights abuses, and points at biased processes of ‘criminalization’. Whereas white-collar crime is frequently legitimated under the guise of reconstruction and economic growth strategies, the victims of corruption and resource grabs often become ‘criminalised’. Such selective forms of criminalisation reflect a securitisation of resource sectors characterised by repressive forms of resource enclosures and increased socio-economic inequalities; putting resource-related white-collar crime at the core of negative peace economies.
Notes
1. Bannon and Collier, Natural Resources; Grzybowski, Toolkit and Guidance; Lujala and Rustad, High-value Natural Resources.
2. Lujala and Rustad, “A Price Worth Fighting.”
3. Tsing, “Natural Resources and Capitalist Frontiers”; Le Billon, Wars of Plunders; Reno, “Understanding Criminality”; Baird and Le Billon, “Landscapes of Political Memories”; Bayer and Pabst, “Heroes and Victims.”
4. Duffield, Global Governance; Cooper, “Picking out the Pieces”; Roy, “Stabilize, Rebuild.” The bulk of these initiatives have targeted extractive sectors, including logging, mining, oil and gas, with renewed attention to large-scale land acquisition and agro-businesses.
5. Unruh and Williams, Land and Post-conflict; Van Leeuwen and Van Der Haar, “Theorizing the Land–Violent Conflict Nexus.”
6. The term white-collar crime was coined and defined by sociologist Edwin Sutherland in 1949, see Sutherland, White Collar Crime. The FBI defines it as ‘those illegal acts which are characterized by deceit, concealment, or violation of trust and which are not dependent upon the application or threat of physical force or violence’. White-collar crime is not necessarily illegal, as it might not be prohibited by law or can even be legalized by vested interests. This can particularly be the case in post-conflict settings awaiting progressive legal reforms. See also Payne, White-collar Crime.
7. Berdal and Suhrke, The Peace in Between; Tsing, “Natural Resources and Capitalist Frontiers.”
8. Tyner and Inwood, “Violence as fetish Geography.”
9. On white-collar crimes on the environment, see Payne, White-collar Crime.
10. Shapiro, “Collaring the Crime,” 346.
11. See notably, Le Billon, Wars of Plunders; Lujala and Rustad, High-value Natural Resources.
12. See, Belloni and Strazzari, “Corruption in Post-conflict”; Cheng and Zaum, Corruption and Post-conflict; Meagher, “Smuggling Ideologies”; Reno, Corruption and State Politics.
13. Cooper, “Picking Out the Pieces”; Maconachie, “The Extractive Industries”; Vogel and Raeymaekers, “Terr (it) or (ies) of Peace.”
14. Le Billon, Wars of Plunders; for a statistical analysis of resource-related peacebuilding initiatives, see Rustad et al. “Do Resource-related Peacebuilding.”
15. Koubi et al., “Do Natural Resources Matter.”
16. de Boer and Bosetti, “The Crime-conflict”; United Nations, A More Secured World.
17. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance”; Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence; Autesserre, “Dangerous Tales”; Le Billon, Wars of Plunders.
18. Ballentine and Nitzschke, Profiting from Peace; Le Billon and Nicholls, “Ending Resource Wars”; Cockayne, “Winning Haiti’s Protection.”
19. Matthew et al., From Conflict to Peacebuilding.
20. On the concept of ‘positive peace economy’ addressing some of these issues, and more generally ‘whereby economic relationships not only have no obvious association with direct/physical violence, but also are free of structural violence and support just and sustainable peace’, see Peterson, Building a Peace Economy.
21. Koubi et al., “Do natural Resources Matter for Interstate and Intrastate Armed Conflict?”; Caxaj et al., “Promises of Peace”; Drohan, Making a Killing; de Morais, Diamond Extraction.
22. Zhukov, “Roads and the Diffusion”; Massé and Le Billon, “Gold Mining in Colombia”; Le Billon, Wars of Plunders.
23. Bergenas and Knight, “Green Terror.”
24. Interest by resource companies will depend on a host of factors, including political risks, including security and reputational risks, as well as commercial considerations, including reserve characteristics, resource prices, exploration and development costs, financing opportunities, competing resource projects and the broad economic conjuncture. For a discussion, see Bray, “Attracting Reputable Companies.”
25. Andreas and Wallman, “Illicit Markets”; Naylor, “Violence and Illegal Economic Activity.”
26. Maystadt et al., “Mineral Resources”; Le Billon, “Diamond Wars.”
27. Blomley, “Law, Property.”
28. While some of these practices may not constitute white-collar crime, they can act as destabilizing factors resulting in conflicts and further repression, see Conde and Le Billon, “Why Do Some Communities Resist.”
29. Kolstad and Soreide, “Corruption in Natural Resource”; Le Billon, Extractive Sectors.
30. Cheng and Zaum, “Corruption and Post-conflict.”
31. Snyder, “Does Lootable Wealth.”
32. Tschakert, “Recognizing and Nurturing”; Geenen, “A Dangerous Bet”; Jackson, “Making a Killing.”
33. Andreas, “Symbiosis Between Peace”; Reno, Corruption; for a critique of hybrid political orders, see Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Fallacy of Constructing.”
34. Marchal, “Peace Operations.”
35. Reno, “Understanding Criminality,” 49.
36. Van Schendel and Abraham, Illicit Flows, 4.
37. Putzel et al., “Formalization,” 453.
38. Cleveland, Diamonds in the Rough; Dietrich, “Power Struggle.”
39. PAC, Diamonds and Human Security.
40. de Morais, Diamond Extraction; Human Rights Watch, If You Come Back.
41. De Boeck, “Garimpeiro Worlds.”
42. Human Rights Watch, If You Come Back; MSF, Les femmes témoignent.
43. De Boeck, “Diamonds and Disputes”; de Morais, Diamond Extraction.
44. Pérez Nino and Le Billon, “Foreign Aid”; Malca and Skaar, “Negative Peace.”
45. Global Witness, Forests, Famine and War.
46. Global Witness, Deforestation Without Limits; Le Billon, “The Political Ecology.”
47. Springer, “Illegal Evictions.”
48. Oldenburg and Neef, “Reversing Land Grabs.”
49. ADHOC, A Turning Point.
50. Neef et al., “The Politics and Ethics,” 1085.
51. ADHOC, Land Situation in 2013.
52. Global Witness, Hostile Takeover; Diepart and Sem, “Fragmented Territories,” 1.
53. Human Rights Watch, Cambodia.
54. Tat and Bagshaw, “A Search for Justice”; Embree, “Criminalizing Land-grabbing”; Oehm, “Land Grabbing.”
55. Ayers, “Sudan’s Uncivil War”; Patey, The New Kings of Crude.
56. Ayers, “Sudan’s Uncivil War”; Kok, “Adding Fuel”; Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas.
57. Rone, Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights.
58. Rolandsen, “A Quick Fix.”
59. Data collated by author from GoSS Ministry of Finance and IMF ‘South Sudan’ country reports.
60. Pinaud, “South Sudan”; Le Billon and Savage, “Binding Pipelines.”
61. James, Fields of Control.
62. Sentry, The Nexus of Corruption.
63. De Waal, “When Kleptocracy”; Pinaud, “South Sudan.”
64. Mayai, Assessing Anti-corruption.
65. Hansen, “The Organized Crime-peace.”
66. Le Billon, Extractive Sectors and Illicit Financial Flows.
67. Global Witness, How Many More?
68. Luckham, “Whose Violence, Whose Security?”
69. ICC, Policy Paper, 14.