TotalEnergies SE Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne rejected accusations the French energy firm has responsibilities in alleged killing of civilians four years ago at its liquefied natural gas project site in Mozambique.
The company “is accused of having directly financed and materially supported” a group of armed forces, who “allegedly detained, tortured and killed dozens of civilians” at the LNG project in the north of the country, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights said in a statement Tuesday. It filed a criminal complaint over the allegations with the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor this week.
“We will defend ourselves and we will explain that all this has nothing to do with TotalEnergies,” Pouyanne said Wednesday on LCI television station. “We’ve done inquiries. We never managed to find evidence” of the allegations.
The complaint comes as Total is on the verge of restarting construction of the project for the first time since the site was shut in 2021 due to an Islamist insurgency. Other global corporations operating in conflict areas have had cases brought against them including Holcim Ltd.’s Lafarge, on trial in France over operations in Syria, and a US ruling against BNP Paribas related to Sudan.
The ECCHR complaint, citing an account by Politico, accuses Total of “complicity in war crimes” through a financial link to a Mozambican army unit that allegedly held civilians in shipping containers where dozens of them were tortured and killed at the project between July and September 2021. The company had evacuated the site earlier that year after an attack by insurgents and declared a force majeure.
In 2023, Jean-Christophe Rufin, a former French ambassador hired by Total to review the security and humanitarian situation around the project, warned that the developers should stop paying bonuses to Mozambique’s security forces protecting the site.
Total asked government authorities to open an investigation, and an inquiry was started in March. The company also requested the Mozambican Commission on Human Rights conduct its own investigation.
“Our reputation is under attack once again because we’re developing one of the largest gas field in the world in Mozambique,” Pouyanne said.
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