Corporate 'sin-washing' and the London Olympics

Dave Zirin's article on corporate 'sin washing' at the London Olympics exposes the corporate criminality of the major corporate sponsors of the Olympics including Dow Chemicals, BP, McDonald's,  and Coca Cola.

Global corporations like Dow Chemical, Adidas, and McDonald's are paying upwards of $100 million USD to sponsor the 2012 London games and associate themselves with the Olympic brand -- but with their brands already well-established, what do corporations get in exchange for these expensive sponsorship deals?

According to Dave Zirin, sportswriter and columnist for The Nation, the payoff comes through "corporate sin-washing."

"More than any other enterprise, if a company associates themselves with an Olympics, it really creates a positive feeling in the mind of the consumer," he says.

But, "if you look at the main sponsors that the International Olympic Committee has brought on board, you see companies like Dow Chemicals, British Petroleum, McDonald's, Adidas." 

These companies, Zirin tells the Center for Media and Democracy, are some of "the worst corporate criminals" most in the need of an Olympic absolution.

Zirin uses the example of Australian Aboriginal boxer Daniel Hooper to highlight the hypocrisy of the London organizers stance on corporate sponsorship

Zirin's favorite example of odd, corporate-friendly Olympic rules involves Australian boxer Daniel Hooper, who wore a T-shirt with an Australian Aboriginal flag in a recent boxing match to showcase his Aboriginal roots. Hooper could face disciplinary action for making a "political statement" by wearing the shirt, which contains a flag not recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The flag is, however, recognized by the Australian government as an official flag of Australia.

"What's particularly perverse about this is that if Damien Hooper had chosen a shirt that said 'I love British Petroleum' or 'Dow Chemicals is A-OK with me', he would have been allowed to compete." Zirin observes "it's amazing to me that wearing a shirt that says 'Dow Chemicals' is not seen as a political statement, while wearing a recognized flag of your own country is a political statement, because the IOC chooses not to recognize that flag."

 Phil England makes similar points in this piece in Ceasfire where he highlights that the Olympics organisers breached their own guidelines on ethical contracting and ignored concerns and complaints from civil society groups about the corporate sponsors.

The apparent unwillingness to apply any of the Olympics’ supposed ethical principles to the selection of corporate sponsors, brushing aside numerous civil society complaints and campaigns, is certainly one thing that the games can claim to be consistent about.

Why is the London Olympic organising committee (LOCOG) breaching its own Sustainable Sourcing Code? and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) breaching its own Code of Ethics? The former promises to “place a high priority on environmental, social and ethical issues when procuring products and services for the games”, while the latter states that the support of sponsors “must be in a form consistent with the rules of sport and the principles defined in the Olympic Charter” which defines Olympism as “seeking to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”.



These are serious questions for the respective committees as well as for the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 (CSL) and its standards and ethics expert David Jackman. Because, as with other forms of cultural sponsorship, these company donations aren’t magnanimous acts of philanthropy, but calculated acts of public relations. At their recent AGM, the BP board outlined how they had made a business case internally for their sponsorship of the Olympics, the costed returns for which included building and protecting their brand. Inside the industry this is understood as maintaining the “social license to operate”.

In a very real sense then, the Olympics are colluding in the public relations campaigns of corporations who are engaged in large-scale environmental and human rights abuses, many of which are the subject of legal actions. The IOC and LOCOG are therefore complicit in normalising and cleansing the image of some of our most heinous corporate criminals and CSL is failing to properly address this.

Corporate crime and no punshment

Great piece by Russell Mokhiber comparing the case of Leandro Andrades, a man imprisoned for life for stealing five videotapes worth $150, with the the failure of the US authorities to pursue criminal charges against any of the corporate executives responsible for two of the biggest crimes in US history- the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the financial meltdown of 2008-2009.

Two recent reports of inquiry into the Gulf Oil Spill and the 2008-2009 Financial crises failed to make any mention about corporate crime or criminal liability, despite finding massive systemic breaches of the law.

As Mohkiber writes:

"We live in a country with two systems of justice. One for the Leandro Andrades of this world and one for the Wall St Banks and their executives and the oil companies and their executives.... We have two systems of justice. One for the corporate class.. and one for the rest of us"

Criminalise corporations not civil society

'Limited liability is at the heart of this rise of corporate power: it constitutes a blanket exemption of a special interest group from accountability for the actions of their companies"

Blankenburg and Plesch

One consequence of the corporate structure and form is the ability to escape and hide liability and responsibility. The tenets of "limited liability" and "corporate person hood" allow corporations to avoid criminal responsibility. This protection is not available to individuals or civil society groups. Governments and authorities rarely use the full power of existing law against corporations.

It is telling to compare the way the US Government uses the full force of the law against civil society groups and whistle-blowers who try to hold it and corporations to account, with its complete inaction against recidivist corporate criminals such as BP who in their reckless disregard are responsible for the deaths of workers and the destruction of ecosystems, environments, livelihoods, and industries in the Gulf of Mexico.

The US government has arrested and imprisoned, without trial, a whistle blower who leaked to WikiLeaks a video showing US forces murdering 100 people, mainly children, in Garani Afghanistan. The video, which showed a US army helicopter gunning down civilians, was released by WikiLeaks early this year and caused outrage around the world. The soldier who is alleged to have released the video has been arrested and detained in an US army prison in Kuwait. The Australian founder of WikiLeaks has been forced to leave the US and go into hiding in response to a "manhunt" by the US government keen to arrest and prosecute him.

WikiLeaks collects and publishes evidence of human rights abuse and illegality by governments and corporations.

But when it comes to recidivist corporate criminals such as BP, Massey Energy or Goldman Sachs there is tough talk about criminal charges but little action. There is no serious attempt by governments to hold corporations, corporate executives, and shareholders personally and criminally responsible for the company's crimes. Laws are rarely used or enforced against corporations and the responsible individuals. And if charges are laid they are usually against low level functionaries and, as in the case of the corporate killings by Union Carbide in Bhopal, it takes 25 years before anyone is legally held to account.

Corporate power, corporate criminality and the worst ecological disaster in human history

"....whether or not the immediate trigger of the explosion is ever fully determined, there can be no mistaking the underlying cause: a government-backed corporate drive to exploit oil and natural gas reserves in extreme environments under increasingly hazardous operating conditions........ To ensure a continued supply of hydrocarbons—and the continued prosperity of the giant energy companies—successive administrations have promoted the exploitation of these extreme energy options with a striking disregard for the resulting dangers"
Michael Klare, The Relentless Pursuit of Extreme Energy

Writing in the Nation Michael Klare believes that the catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's leaking oil rig is likely to be the greatest ecological disaster in human history. Michael Klare*, who is Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, is one of the world's leading analysts of global energy and resource politics.

Although BP continues to minimize the amount of oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon rig, Klare estimates that the amount of oil spilt is equivalent to an Exxon Valdez spill every 4 days. The destruction is catastrophic and probably irreparable.

The Gulf seafood industry, which provides much of the seafood consumed in the US, has been destroyed, perhaps forever. The oil has poisoned the water of the Gulf, depriving it of oxygen and killing entire classes of marine species and living creatures. Whole marine and coastal landscapes have been destroyed, likely to never recover.

Klare identifies a host of actors who bear responsibility. BP is the ultimate villain. BP, whose environmental and safety record is appalling, has used its financial and political power to protect itself from regulatory oversight. It has bought off political and regulatory bodies and avoided all forms of accountability and scrutiny. Its response to the spill has been inept.

Various contractors- Halliburton, Transocean, Cameron International- as well as government instrumentalities such as the USA Minerals Management Service, have all breached legislative and regulatory requirements

Ultimately though Klare argues, responsibility for the catastrophe lies with the Bush and Obama administrations. Klare writes

"...there can be no mistaking the underlying cause: a government-backed corporate drive to exploit oil and natural gas reserves in extreme environments under increasingly hazardous operating conditions"

Klare believes that the world has entered an even more dangerous period where disasters like this one will occur more frequently and will be more destructive. Klare argues that as long as the major resources and energy firms continue to rest future profits on exploring and drilling in ever-deeper waters and more risky locations—and governments collude with them in this—more catastrophes are inevitable. Worse, the oil and energy companies do not have the existing technologies to respond adequately to the new challenges.

*Michael Klare's latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy