France calls for Iran investment boycott
By Peggy Hollinger and Pan Kwan Yuk in Paris
Published: September 16 2007 23:40
The French government has asked the country’s biggest companies not to invest in Iran, as the tension mounts over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions ahead of a meeting this week of the world’s big powers. Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister, on Sunday indicated that France’s newly elected government had joined forces with Washington to solicit a sort of unofficial boycott of Iranian projects. “We have asked a certain number of our big companies not to respond to Iranian tenders. I think this has been heard and we are not the only ones to have done so,” he said in a televised interview."
I wonder if France's boycott will work any better than the United State's efforts? One must wonder if the message is being conveyed in a straightforward or even possibly uniform manner. Unfortunately, only time will tell, as in the example of Weatherford. I still do not think that story has been fully told.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Loopholes
Weatherford, a U.S. based energy firm, has decided to pull out of Sudan after Fortune exposed the company’s operations in Sudan. To operate in Sudan, Weatherford used a foreign-registered subsidiary staffed solely with non-U.S. citizens which are exempt from U.S. sanctions law. Some have speculated that Weatherford feared bad publicity over legal action. The company “was operating out of an unmarked two-story house” but now will begin withdrawing from the country in an “orderly” fashion. The actual time it will take to unwind contracts and shutdown operations is unknown.
We applaud Fortune for revealing Weatherford’s covert business approaches and for making KLD and other terror free list publishers’ jobs a little easier.
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