Zimeray & Finelle’s insight on the guilty plea concluded between Lafarge and the US DOJ on 18 October 2022, and its implications on the French criminal proceedings : “The Lafarge case is prototypical of a profound evolution of business law, highlighted by the criminal liability of companies for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. Hence, it is being followed with attention by all those who, from outside the case, see in it the foreshadowing of a new risk and the development of a new field of law, “business and human rights”. It is in this spirit that we share the concerns raised by the agreement recently concluded by the company with American judicial authorities, as part of a guilty plea partly based on similar facts to the current French procedure”.

“The conditions of Carlos Ghosn’s imprisonment in Japan illustrate how much the Japanese justice system ignores the presumption of innocence, argues François Zimeray, a lawyer at the Paris Bar and the International Criminal Court (…)”.

“Il faut dépasser l’opposition stérile entre droits de l’homme et contrats, comme s’il y avait d’un côté le camp de la vertu, de l’autre celui de l’indignité. La voie de l’efficacité consiste à placer, comme le yin et le yang, la cause du progrès des droits fondamentaux au coeur des impératifs économiques…”