Global Policy Forum

This week's International Bar Association (IBA) conference in San Francisco is awash with debate about the threat to the independence of business lawyers posed by legislation like the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

However, the event kicked off in an entirely different path thanks to a provocative speech by the Argentinian lawyer Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who was recently appointed chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC). When he stepped up to the microphone at the conference's opening ceremony to give his first public speech since taking up the post, many of the business lawyers in the audience will have mentally switched off, assuming that his comments would have little relevance to their own work.

It soon became clear, however, that Moreno-Ocampo was determined to engage his audience of 3,000 lawyers, well aware that the vast majority of them were from commercial firms. He even compared himself to a global law firm, with offices in more than 100 countries and its headquarters in The Hague.

Then he got serious by linking mass killings in The Democratic Republic of Congo to the world of business law. A series of UN reports have alleged that companies in 25 countries, including the UK and the US, have helped fund the crimes taking place in the Congo through the illegal export of natural resources and trade in arms. The banking system, too, is in the dock, accused of helping to fund these illegal business operations.

Moreno-Ocampo maintains that the killing will only stop when this illegal business activity ceases and intends to investigate these companies to ascertain whether any of them should be brought before the ICC.

To the discomfort of Charles Lawton, the chair of the IBA's section on energy and natural resources law, Moreno-Ocampo used his address to call on lawyers, specifically those in the energy sector, to help his investigations. What he did not say, but what will have been clearly understood by the audience, is that some of the illegal business activities he referred to are likely to have been facilitated by lawyers. His speech certainly provided his audience with food for thought as they surged out of the hall to attend the traditional opening party and do a spot of networking.

Commercial lawyers are all too familiar with the business challenges posed by globalisation. They have also been forced to face the regulatory threat to their independence prompted by the fact that their profession was unable to prevent securities fraud from taking place on a mass scale.

Now they must prepare to come under some scrutiny from an entirely different front.

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