In March 2025 eight executives of six major energy and water companies encountered a serious surprise on their way to work. As they arrived at their company offices in London, the senior members of staff from Thames Water, Enquest, Perenco, among others, were approached by members of the Citizen’s Arrest Network (CAN) and put under citizen’s arrests.
The executives’ reactions were mixed: though all looked bemused, their responses varied from ‘Oh really?’, to ‘no thank you’, to compliantly waiting for the police to arrive, to literally running away. Each arrest was accompanied with the presentation of a dossier of evidence against the arrestee to the police for crimes ranging from public nuisance, to mismanagement of funds. Since making these eight arrests, the CAN has handed in additional indictments against BP and Shell executives to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Though none of these citizen’s arrests led to the police detaining those ‘arrested’, the attempts represent a welcome turn in the tide of climate arrest stories. Somehow, in recent years, the phrase ‘climate criminal’ has come to refer, not to those running (and profiting greatly from) the corporations destroying the planet, but to individuals trying to hold governments and corporations accountable to their climate commitments through acts of civil resistance. This is a topsy-turvy and sinister state of affairs. It is the global equivalent of a known arsonist burning your house down, and you turning a blind eye to his crime while demanding the friendly neighbour who rang the fire department and interrupted you at work to let you know about the incident, be arrested for inconveniencing you.
In Britain, the situation is especially bad. The UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders, Michel Forst, has said that he has “not seen a situation as concerning as the one in the UK”. In Britain, environmental protestors – those who object to the continuation of business as usual while climate disasters become evermore frequent, widespread and intense – are arrested at nearly three times the global average rate.
You’d be forgiven for being confused by a justice system (in this case, the UK’s) that sentences prison time for throwing soup at a painting (for example, Just Stop Oil activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland), but not for poisoning a watershed relied upon by thirty million people (for example, Shell in the Niger Delta). But around the world the idea that the ‘real criminals’ are those destroying and polluting precious ecosystems, indigenous lands, and watersheds, all to extract oil and gas at great personal benefit, is beginning to grow in public salience.
While organisations like Stop Ecocide International campaign to have ecocide recognised as a crime in international law, others like the CAN have decided to take the law into their own hands. Charging executives, not with ecocide, but public nuisance, the CAN are demanding that those responsible for destroying our planet and polluting our water be held directly responsible for the harm they cause.
This article takes a closer look at what citizen’s arrests are, why the Citizen’s Arrest Network exists, and the implications of these recent arrest attempts for the future of corporate accountability.
What are citizen’s arrests?
Around the world, domestic legislation gives members of the public powers to perform a citizen’s arrest, if they know, or reasonably believe, that the individual has, is about to, or is in the process of, committing a crime.
Though the rules around such arrests vary by country, the idea is that so long as you have evidence and your approach is proportional to the crime you suspect or have seen is being committed, you can perform a citizen’s arrest, regardless of whether you are a law enforcement official, or even necessarily a citizen of the country you are in.
In London, where these recent citizen’s arrests took place, citizen’s arrests are set out in Section 24A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) of 1984. This piece of legislation allows:
- A person other than a constable may arrest without a warrant—
(a)anyone who is in the act of committing an indictable offence;
(b)anyone whom he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be committing an indictable offence.
- Where an indictable offence has been committed, a person other than a constable may arrest without a warrant—
(a)anyone who is guilty of the offence;
(b)anyone whom he has reasonable grounds for suspecting to be guilty of it.
In England and Wales, there are two categories of offences: summary and indictable. Summary offences, or minor offences, are less serious crimes. Indictable offences, or serious offences, are more severe crimes that require more comprehensive investigation and carry harsher punishments. Significantly, citizen’s arrests are only permitted in relation to indictable offences.
What is the Citizen’s Arrest Network?
The CAN is an organisation that aims to ‘hold those making the decisions driving the worst environmental pollution to account’, namely, by putting them under citizen’s arrests.
The organisation has worked with lawyers to gather evidence of wrongdoing and ‘put together cases against those causing harm’, especially harm in the form of environmental damage, and threats to health caused by the water companies allowing our rivers and seas to fill with sewage and plastic.
The CAN has accused the executives they have attempted to put under arrest with crimes ranging from public nuisance to mismanagement of customer funds. For example, the charges put to the Thames Water executives related to their roles in overseeing unsafe infrastructure for drinking water, mismanagement of funds, and the illegal discharge of sewage.
CAN states: ‘We can no longer stand by as crimes are committed. It’s time to hold these criminals to account. Citizen’s Arrest Network has handed evidence to lawyers to submit to the crown prosecution service and confronted these criminals. Taking peaceful and legitimate action to put a stop to this.’
One CAN representative, Rev Helen Burnett, who delivered indictment papers to BP, described the campaign of arrests as ‘a litmus test’. She said:
“I’m sceptical that our judicial system is fit for purpose, and this will test it. At the moment, the law protects the rich, and the law should be there to protect all people and to allow for the flourishing of all people. Right now the highest emitters are effectively above the law, while the poorest and the most vulnerable to climate change remain unprotected….Those people whose emissions are harming our biodiversity, our environment, polluting the air, need to be called to account, and if the law can’t do that, then the law is an ass and is not worth the paper that it’s written on.”
Who have the CAN placed under citizen’s arrest so far?
The CEOs, CFOs and senior officers subject to the citizen’s arrests were:
- Chris Weston CEO of Thames Water,
- Alastair Cochran CFO of Thames Water,
- Jonathan Copus CFO of Enquest
- Stephen Lambert Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Serica Energy
- Linda Cook CEO of Harbour Energy
- Gilles d’Argouges CFO of Perenco
- Jonathan Parr Group General Counsel, Perenco
- Amjad Bseisu CEO of Enquest
How could citizen’s arrests influence the future of corporate accountability?
Even if tactics such as placing oil, gas, and water CEOs under citizen’s arrest is unlikely to lead to their imprisonment for harm caused to the natural environment and public health, it could still have a significant impact on accountability in the future, in a number of ways.
Firstly, it will make the corporate actors responsible for considerable environmental harm and destruction think twice. Probably not about their damaging actions, but about the personal cost and inconvenience they risk incurring in continuing business as usual, at least publicly. We know that picketing energy corporation offices, and appealing to CEOs’ good nature, hasn’t been successful in changing their business strategy to date, especially not when our targets have been receiving millions in government subsidies and annual bonuses, in addition to unprecedented quarterly profits. However, disturbing their daily routines, repeatedly yet unpredictably putting them under citizen’s arrest, again and again, for the crimes they have committed and continue to commit, might succeed where other, gentler measures have failed.
It is certainly a new arrow in the climate campaigning quiver, and one which has been relatively unexplored to date. With the exception of Peter Tatchell’s 1999 attempt to place the Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe under citizen’s arrest for the alleged torture of two Zimbabwean journalists.
Secondly, this method puts the names, faces and roles of those most responsible for environmental destruction, and ever-rising bills for (literally) shit services into the public eye.
It has never been more important to know the enemy – or at least the person profiting millions (or billions) while your bills go up, especially in Britain where nearly a third of children are growing up in poverty, despite living in the sixth richest state in the world. The reality of the gross economic inequality in ‘rich’ countries like the UK and USA is rapidly growing in public salience, and naming the ‘villains’ looks to be an important element of increasing public awareness of the injustice of our current wealth distribution/hoarding systems.
Indeed, groups like Fossil Free London, who have been working for years to make London inhospitable to the fossil fuel industry, have recently collaborated with Chris Packham on a series of ‘Wanted’ posters, naming and shaming many of the same executives CAN arrested, for example Stephen Lambert, Amjad Bseisu and Gilles d’Argouges. Green New Deal Rising have placed adverts on the tube, highlighting Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ responsibility for the shockingly austerity-mirroring Spring budget that will push the most vulnerable in Britain into poverty, while exempting the super rich from tax increases – an act that could generate billions for the UK economy. Other groups like Climate Resistance have recently projected the faces of prominent billionaire businessmen, especially those with close proximity to the Trump administration on the Houses of Parliament as part of their Abolish Billionaires campaign, with Greenpeace and 38 Degrees, undertaking similar anti-billionaire and anti-Musk large scale projections.
Crucially, anonymity is a thing of the past for climate criminals, and (attempted) citizen’s arrests, and the media coverage they generate, undoubtedly have a part to play in this. Hopefully, budding ecocide legislation will mean that soon there are tangible, criminal repercussions for the harm energy and water executives cause through neglect, mismanagement and lack of investment in a sustainable future. Until that day, citizen’s arrests will now form part of the arsenal of ways to ensure there are social and reputational repercussions.
Thirdly, by placing energy and private water bosses under citizen’s arrest, CAN have subverted the narrative of criminality in relation to who commits climate crimes in the UK. Professor Chris Hilson, Director of the University of Reading’s Centre for Climate and Justice told The Canary,
“throwing paint at works of art and stopping traffic no longer really work for the climate and environmental movement’, not only have they been criminalised, but they are ‘viewed by many members of the public as ‘irresponsible’, which has put them off the message…..This new tactic of citizens’ arrests, in contrast, looks much more like ‘responsible’ citizenly behaviour….Those being arrested now become seen as the irresponsible ones.”
Irresponsible, identifiable, and liable to citizen’s arrest for their crimes – these are the impacts of citizen’s arrests on corporate polluters in 2025.
Be Curious
- Follow the Citizen’s Arrest Network to find out more about their actions as they happen.
- Learn more about ecocide and the essential work done by Stop Ecocide International to secure legislation that prohibits individuals and corporations committing this awful crime.
- Check out these actions by Chris Packham, Fossil Free London, Climate Resistance, GNDR, and Greenpeace UK.
- Find out more about campaigns, like Compass’, to bring essential resources like water back into public ownership and out of profiteers’ hands.
- Check out organisations like Defend our Juries and Rebels in Prison to find out how you can support peaceful activists serving prison sentences today.
Featured imaged by: CAN
