On 21 April 2017, the Court of Appeal of ‘s-Hertogenbosch convicted Dutch businessman Guus Kouwenhoven to 19 years of imprisonment for, inter alia, complicity in war crimes committed in Liberia. In the late 1990s Kouwenhoven had provided arms to the murderous regime of the Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was later convicted to 50 years of imprisonment by the Special Court of Sierra Leone. This is a rare example of a domestic court holding a corporate actor liable for involvement in the commission of international crimes abroad. In line with the recent Corporate Crimes Principles of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, a corporate actor is defined as a ‘corporate entity or individual acting on behalf of a corporate entity’.. It bears emphasis that Kouwenhoven, while directing a corporate entity, was convicted in his individual capacity. In the Netherlands Kouwenhoven is not a unique case; earlier, another businessman, Frans van Anraat, who had sold raw materials for the production of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, was also convicted of complicity in war crimes (upheld on appeal). The Kouwenhoven case highlights again the potential of complicity to hold criminally to account Western corporate actors who ‘recklessly’ accept the risk that their business dealings with  warlords could contribute to the commission of international crimes. The next challenge will be how to prosecute corporate entities rather than individual businessmen for their involvement in international crimes.
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