The French energy conglomerate Totalenergies SE has been accused of human rights abuses and atrocities at its Mozambique operations, even as it holds ISO 9001 certification issued by the prestigious French certification body, AFNR.
According to reporting by Alex Perry in Politico, Totalenergies hired private soldiers to defend its Mozambique natural gas site, and those soldiers then committed widespread acts of violence, including wholesale slaughter and rape of civilians. From that report:
The [Totalenergies] soldiers accused the villagers of being members of the [ISIS] insurgency. They separated the men — a group of between 180 and 250 — from the women and children. Then they crammed their prisoners into the shipping containers on either side of the entrance, hitting, kicking and striking them with rifle butts.
The soldiers held the men in the containers for three months. They beat, suffocated, starved, tortured and finally killed their detainees. Ultimately, only 26 prisoners survived.
This second bloodbath … was carried out not by Islamists but by a Mozambican military unit operating out of the TotalEnergies gatehouse.
The energy company’s alliance with the Mozambican military inevitably raises questions over the leadership of TotalEnergies CEO and Chairman Patrick Pouyanné.
The French oil and gas major’s first task was to ring the land it had been granted with a 12-foot-high double security fence dotted with watchtowers. To defend it, the company set up the Joint Task Force, a rotating presence of some 700 Mozambican soldiers, commandos and paramilitary police — paid, equipped and accommodated by Total.
Soon this vast and secretive fortress had acquired a nickname: Totalandia.
Oxebridge reached out to Totalenergies and confirmed its ISO 9001 is current and has not been withdrawn by AFNOR. The certification of companies involved in human rights abuses, international war crimes, human trafficking and money laundering, is a problem that the oversight bodies within the ISO scheme have ignored in exchange for payments made through “accreditation fees.” AFNOR is the largest and most famous certification body in France and prominent in Europe and Africa. It is accredited by the French accreditation body COFRAC, one of the most influential in the IAF, and its regional accreditation body EA.
The IAF and its bodies, including EA, have refused to take action when confronted with ISO certificates being held by companies found to have engaged in crimes. Such companies, including Totalenergies, pay fees to bodies such as AFNOR, which then pass a portion of those fees onto EA and the IAF. As a result, the bodies tasked with overseeing the trust and validity of ISO certifications have a financial incentive to do the opposite. This has resulted in the overall IAF scheme acting as a “protection racket” for those companies that buy their certificates, as the IAF will run to the defense of such companies when confronted with their crimes.
The IAF’s current senior administrator, Victor Gandy, and its current President, Emanuele Riva, have both suggested that IAF internal procedures take precedence over international law. They have refused to force the withdrawal of certifications even when international courts have proved crimes were committed.
