A Few Words on Irresponsibility

By Ken Silverstein

Aron Cramer, President and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), sent us a letter defending his group's work on a “development fund” for oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, one of the world's most corrupt and thuggish regimes. Last week, I suggested that the fund was pure P.R. designed to improve the image of President Teodoro Obiang and his sponsors in the U.S. government.

Much to the contrary, says Cramer. “This initiative,” he writes, “creates a promising new model for ensuring that Equatorial Guinea's oil reserves are developed with a view to addressing the country's most pressing social needs.” Cramer says that my posting put too much emphasis on the fact that Obiang will be the president of the fund, and ignored that “a diverse range of stakeholders . . . will also participate in decision making.”

Yet a document describing the fund, which Cramer attached to his letter (PDF derived from MS Word), says: “Final decision-making on programs and budgets must involve the Office of the Presidency at the highest level.” The document continues: “Over-all control of the Mechanism remains in the hands of the government of Equatorial Guinea and its representatives.” In other words, BSR will effectively cede control to Obiang, who since staging a 1979 coup has systematically enriched himself and his family and maintained his grip on power through political killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest.

A recent letter (PDF) from Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expresses the confusion and distress many of us feel when we see our most prominent officials hobnobbing with a despot. “The photograph of you and Mr. Obiang,” wrote Senator Levin, “will be used by critics of the United States to argue that we are not serious about human rights and democratic reforms in a country with substantial oil wealth.”

Cramer also took issue with my description of BSR as an organization that allows companies to “demonstrate their social consciousness” by joining, for a fee, his group. “BSR maintains an open membership policy,” he wrote, “and welcomes companies into its membership so long as the reason for their joining is to improve their policies and practices. This means that our membership may include companies that are often the targets of criticism. A closed membership limited only to a charmed circle of companies that are universally hailed as getting most things right would severely limit our ability to make change happen.”

I attended a BSR conference in Washington last year, which was sponsored by a motley assortment of tobacco, fast food, pharmaceutical, and energy companies. But my personal favorite exhibitor at the conference was APCO Associates, a Washington lobbying firm. A few years ago APCO helped Philip Morris create a fake “watchdog” group called Contributions Watch. The latter claimed to be an “independent, national research organization committed to examining the amount of special interest money that flows to candidates,” but was in reality a front group whose mission was to attack trial lawyers, the tobacco industry's nemeses.

In a promotional brochure it handed out at the conference, APCO described past clients as: “A Fortune 50 American company seeking to shed its international reputation as a bully”; “A group of businesses fighting the rise of frivolous lawsuits”; and “A company forced into an unprecedented restatement of earnings.” What a high-minded bunch—all, no doubt, imbued with a keen sense of social responsibility.