- Date filed
- 16 May 2018
- Keywords
- Countries of harm
- Current status
-
Rejected
- Sectors
- NCP
Allegations
An NGO from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) called ADIMED (Action pour le développement et l’innovation médicale) submitted a complaint to the German NCP arguing that filed Pharmakina SA, a manufacturer of quinine in the DRC, had breached the OECD Guidelines by cooperating with rebel forces during the civil war in the DRC between 1996-1999 and violating human rights and labor law when laying off 139 workers during that time.
Relevant OECD Guidelines
Outcome
The German NCP traced the ownership of the company, finding that it had not been owned by a German company, but is rather a DRC-headquartered company of which 99.99% of its shares have been, since 1999, held by a Luxembourg public limited company. The German NCP found that although a German company may have been a shareholder until 1997, that company ceased to exist at that time and could not form a basis for territorial jurisdiction. The German NCP declined to transfer the complaint to the Luxembourg NCP or any other NCP, saying this would have required an in-depth assessment of the material aspects of the case. In OECD Watch’s opinion, rather than rejecting the case outright, the German NCP should have transferred the case to the Luxembourg NCP and allowed that NCP to do its own initial assessment.
More details
- Defendant
- Complainants
- Affected people
- Date rejected / concluded
- 18 October 2018