US ambassador to Norway Benson K. Whitney spoke to the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) on Friday, and made it clear that shared core values "like fairness, transparency, justice, dialogue, ethics" gave way to "disappointment and surprise" due to the failure of Norway to live up these ideals when investing its petroleum riches.
"It's one thing for an individual Norwegian to get up one morning, read the paper, decide they don't like a company for some reason, and sell their stock. This is a private decision with limited impact," Whitney said.
"It's quite another thing for a sovereign government – particularly one like Norway - to take an official and very public action to accuse a foreign company of severely unethical conduct and sell its stock. And this is what has happened most recently to the American firms Wal-Mart, Freeport-Mason, and earlier to Kerr-Mcgee," Whitney said.
Whitney criticized what he views as the less than rigorous process of investigating accusations of bad ethics in corporations, and asked the Norwegian government to understand the ramifications of its decisions.
The ambassador argued that the choice of company for review was basically arbitrary since there was no set standard for the procedure, and that the complaint process was also flawed.
"The council primarily reacts to individuals, outside organizations, and government entities who challenge the ethics of a particular company," Whitney said.
Norway primarily drops companies from its Petroleum Fund, now known as "The Government Pension Fund - Global", when it finds links to the weapons industry.
"But even in the non-defense cases, one hundred percent of those found guilty of serious or systematic human rights violations, guilty of desecrating the environment, of violating fundamental ethical norms, are American. I ask you, is it reasonable to believe that among the Pension Fund's 4,000 plus companies, from all over the world, the process has revealed that only American companies are unethical?" Whitney asked.
The ambassador argued that is was precisely American openness that put its companies at a disadvantage to firms in more "repressive societies", where complaints were harder to air and investigate.
Whitney was careful to make his suggestions in a framework of open dialogue, and to emphasize that Norway must form Norwegian policy.
"I hope my remarks, although at times critical, will be interpreted as, in fact, testimony to Norway’s admirable system of values which Norwegians try to live up to and express every day," Whitney said.
