A New York jury has found that French banking giant BNP Paribas’s work in Sudan helped to prop up the regime of former ruler Omar al-Bashir, making it liable for atrocities that took place under his rule.
The eight-member jury on Friday sided with three plaintiffs originally from Sudan, awarding a total of $20.75 million in damages, after hearing testimony describing horrors committed by Sudanese soldiers and the Popular Defense Forces, the government-linked militia known as the Janjaweed.
The plaintiffs—two men and one woman, all now American citizens—told the federal court in Manhattan that they had been tortured, burned with cigarettes, slashed with a knife, and, in the case of the woman, sexually assaulted.
The trial focused on whether BNP Paribas’s financial services were a “natural and adequate cause” of the harm suffered by survivors of ethnic cleansing and mass violence in Sudan.
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U.S. Jury Finds French Bank BNP Paribas Complicit in Sudan Atrocities
10/18/2025
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