The ethics council for Norway’s $1.8 trillion sovereign wealth fund warned that the rolling back of anticorruption legislation in the U.S. is likely to make it more difficult to identify businesses breaching ethical guidelines.
The U.S. has previously taken a crucial role in securing settlements in cross-border investigations into companies ranging from Glencore to Airbus and Credit Suisse, resulting in billions of dollars in fines. The outlook for such cases in the future is unclear after President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to cease enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, effectively hitting pause on U.S involvement.
“Almost all of our corruption cases have in some way been connected with an FCPA investigation,” said Eli Ane Lund, head of the secretariat for the Council on Ethics. “The whole system that has been established for a company to avoid getting involved in corruption comes from legislation and enforcement, much of it in the US — the U.S. has had a very big impact on this.”
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is advised by an external Council on Ethics that considers issues ranging from human rights violations to environmental damage. Last year, it reviewed companies with potential links to the war in Gaza and the West Bank, and while a handful of cases remain under investigation, the majority have been concluded, the council said in its annual report March 10.
“Before the war in Gaza started, there were many companies that were all ready excluded on the grounds of our criteria,” Svein Richard Brandtzaeg, head of the council and a former Norsk Hydro chief executive officer, said. “We have been criticized for taking too much time, but moving too quickly risks making the wrong decisions.”
The number of cases the council looked at associated with war and conflict tripled in 2024, compared with a year earlier, according to the report. Inquiries rooted in financial crime have also grown in recent years and the Council is looking more into how companies impact biodiversity. It was in contact with 76 companies last year and met with 22.
As of the end of 2024, just over a hundred companies were outside the investment universe of Norges Bank Investment Management, the official name of the fund, based on recommendations by the council. It worked with 250 companies in 2024 and advised that 15 be excluded.
