Possible Non‐Political Facilitators
We know since the Nuremberg trials, that business leaders too have moral obligations.
Those we name in the petition represent Europe’s and America’s biggest energy companies and at the same time Russia’s most important energy partners.
These companies are so huge that they dwarf many countries in their economic importance. To give you an idea : the American energy giant Exxonmobil had in 2010 a revenue of almost 370 billion dollars. Syria had at the same time only a revenue of 60 billion dollars for the whole country. And here we only talk about Exxonmobil. But almost every Western country has one or more companies like Exxonmobil.
Since these multinationals are as huge as countries, often considered as systemic, too big to fail, their directors have easy access to their political leaders. Their influence and lobbying power can hardly be overestimated.
We know for sure that they lobbied apart and in group in order to secure their economic interests in Russia.
We also know for sure that the Obama administration pressured Congress not to issue too strict sanctions against Russia. European governments acted pretty much in the same way.
Given the genocidal scale of the crimes committed in Syria, a highly immoral behavior.
As leaders of companies as huge as countries, it is impossible that the cited businessmen were not aware that their trade with Russia facilitates Putin’s role in the large scale crimes against humanity committed in Syria and elsewhere.
As human beings with moral conscience these business leaders could and should have stopped trade with Russia themselves.
For this reason we call upon the International Criminal Court to also investigate and eventually prosecute the cited business leaders for their possible complicity to the crimes against humanity committed in Syria for reason of criminal omission.
The Syrian Petition 