ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a criminological explanation for the apparent impunity enjoyed by Trafigura and the Ivorian state and looks at the efficacy of informal, civil society and sanctions. A reliance on strict legal definitions of crime has often meant that impunity for powerful crimes has been implicitly constructed as a failure of the law and its criminal justice processes as well as a lack of political will on the part of the domestic state and the international community of states. When reviewing the literature on corporate and state-corporate crime, it becomes clear that very little empirical research has been conducted into the mechanisms of impunity that operate around this class of criminality. A powerful counterbalance to struggles against impunity is denial, and Cohen's theory of state crime denial is employed throughout to explain some of the tactics deployed to counter sanctions and censure efforts by civil society actors.
