Last week, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Territories, released a report documenting how corporations are complicit in international crimes in the West Bank and Gaza. 

Drawing upon years of research findings by, among others, the Amsterdam based Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and its partners, including Al-Haq and Who Profits, the report exposes the role of arms producers, tech companies, extractive companies, and agribusiness, among others. 

In the report, Albanese calls for immediate diplomatic, economic, and legal action, saying that “far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide.”

“International partnerships providing weaponry and technical support have enhanced Israeli capacity to perpetuate apartheid and recently, to sustain its assault on Gaza,” the report found. “Israel benefits from the largest-ever defense procurement program – for the F-35 fighter jet, led by United States-based Lockheed Martin, alongside at least 1,650 other companies, including Italian manufacturer Leonardo S.p.A and eight States. Components and parts constructed globally contribute to the Israeli F-35 fleet, which Israel customizes and maintains in partnership with Lockheed Martin and domestic companies.”

Lydia de Leeuw is the strategic litigation lead at SOMO.

“It’s important to mention that the report is not trying to present an exhaustive list, or to say these are the companies that are the worst or the most involved,” de Leeuw told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “But it is to expose, more definitively a system, a structure, an infrastructure of this state/corporate crime. So it is not just about these companies where they are mentioned. It is more the system and it’s not a coincidence that the system was set up so that companies can and are operating with complete impunity for their involvement in the illegal occupation, in the apartheid and now in the genocide. So there’s a problem with the system overall. And companies from all over the world are involved.”

During the Nuremberg trials, companies were tried for their complicity with the Nazis – most notably IG Farben.

“The Nuremberg trials showed that individual executives can be held to account and can be held liable for actions that were committed through the vehicle of the corporation.”

“The corporations were not criminally charged, only the executives. They customized the supplies they were providing to the Nazi army for the destruction of the Jewish and other people. They knew what they were doing. They knew what they were providing was the means for their destruction. They were indispensable to the whole process.” 

“Some of those corporate executives were convicted and sentenced to prison. For a long time after the Nuremberg trials, there was very little international prosecution for war crimes. Different tribunals were set up for Sierra Leone, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, but in none of those tribunals, corporate actors were even in focus. I mean, there have been discussions. I think France pushed for an inclusion of corporations in the Rome Statute , which established the International Criminal Court, but that did not happen.”

“But the Rome Statute is neutral as to whether complicit corporate executives can be held liable.” 

“So in theory, political leaders and military leaders as well as corporate leaders could face accountability in The Hague before the International Court of International Criminal Court. It hasn’t happened yet, but I think there are plenty of legal arguments to show that in theory, corporate leaders, corporate executives, could be held to account using the same provisions in the Rome Statute that are applied to political leaders.”

“In the Netherlands, we did have two convictions over the past few decades. We had two convictions of individual corporate executives. One person was held accountable for his role in war crimes by the Charles Taylor regime in Liberia. And this was for the provision of weapons. Another Dutch businessman was also held criminally liable for his role in the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein in the chemical attacks on Halabja. This businessman had provided a critical chemical component that was used in those attacks,”

“Those cases were brought by Dutch prosecutors. Under Dutch law, individual corporate executives can be held civilly and criminally liable. And in relation to atrocity crimes, the most obvious mode of liability would be aiding and abetting. But also under Dutch law, corporations can also be held criminally liable for their involvement in international crimes.” 

SOMO has brought criminal complaints against corporations for their complicity with Israel, right?

“Yes, together with our partners, Al-Haq, the European Legal Support Center and The Rights Forum, after years of investigation, we filed a criminal complaint with the Dutch public prosecutor in November 2023 against booking.com which is headquartered in the Netherlands. We accuse the company of laundering the proceeds of crime. The predicate offense is the transfer of the Israeli population into the occupied Palestinian territory, which is a war crime under international law.”

“We know that the settlements are established and maintained through a variety of war crimes, one of them being the transfer of the population of the occupying power. Then you have these settlements with settlers in them, which, as the International Court of Justice has made very clear in two advisory opinions, one in 2004 one in 2024, the settlements are illegal under international law and they must be dismantled.” 

“But in the meantime, there is a lot of economic activity happening. I mentioned agriculture, but also tourism is happening there. And what booking.com does is not unique. Airbnb is there also and a number of other online tourism platforms. They rent out accommodations in these illegal Israeli settlements. You can go online now and you can select an accommodation of your choosing in one of these settlements. You pay a sum of money for  your stay. The person you are paying then owes a fee to booking.com. So, for every booking that is made through the booking.com platform, booking.com takes a cut of the fee of the stay. Normally this is around 15%, but it can go up to 30%.” 

“The higher the percentage fee the higher your place ends up on the search results. The owners are paying a higher percentage so their place is more visible on the platform.”

“We and other organizations have been confronting booking.com with the illegality of the settlements, arguing that they should not be doing business there and asking them to act in line with international standards and to disengage from the settlements, to no longer list these illegal Israeli settlements on their website. These organizations include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestinian human rights organizations, Israeli groups. SOMO has also contacted the company and the response has been we are all about tourism, people should be able to explore the world, and of course we value human rights, we have a due diligence process and we act in line with domestic law. That’s what they say.”

“Now, I guess that we should read between the lines that booking.com thinks that Israeli law applies in the occupied West Bank, which it doesn’t. So that’s for them where it stops. Also the company told us that international law applies to states and it does not apply to companies, so that they see that as another reason why they remain involved with the settlements.” 

In the United States, we don’t have this ability to file for citizens to file a criminal complaint. 

“That’s very important to mention, because this obviously differs from system to system. In the Dutch system, an individual citizen or an NGO, can file a criminal complaint. You file that with the public prosecutor. Only the public prosecutor can bring the case before the courts.” 

“That means that as the filers of the criminal complaints, we are dependent on the prosecutor on whether or not there will be an investigation and or indictment against booking.com. And we have now been waiting for over one year and a half for an answer.” 

“We’ve been getting intermittent responses, nothing of substance. Just saying that, you know the case is being taken very seriously or it’s being very seriously looked at, it’s a very well researched criminal complaint –  things like that.”  

“The prosecutor has to make a decision at some point. The prosecutor can say –  we’ve launched an investigation, or we are indicting, or we have decided not to investigate, or we’ve investigated but decided not to indict. And they have to issue a decision. And they have to explain why they decided not to act or not act.”

“If they decide not to investigate, we can file what’s called an Article 12 procedure, where we can go to the court and ask the court to make an independent assessment on whether or not a case should be investigated. And if the court decides yes, there are facts that merits an investigation, that sends the prosecutor back to the drawing board.”

What law are you alleging booking.com violated?

“The Dutch criminal code, which incorporates international criminal law, including the Geneva conventions and the Rome Statute. And under Dutch law, corporations and individuals can be held liable for their involvement in those international crimes –  including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

A similar case was filed against Airbnb. Did SOMO that?

“No that was another case brought in Ireland.”

Why would you focus on tourism in the West Bank when there is a genocide being committed in Gaza?

“I’m not going to comment on cases we haven’t filed yet. The criminal complaint against booking.com was years in the making. We started our investigation well before the genocide.”

“Every penny that is being made in the illegal settlements is unlawful.”

[For the complete q/a format Interview with Lydia de Leeuw, see 25 Corporate Crime Reporter 28(12), July 14, 2025, print edition only]