German gun maker Heckler & Koch is making sales of its machine guns off limits to "crisis regions" with warring or corrupt governments.
Those areas include all of Africa, Mexico, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel, The Guardian reported. However, the company intends to fulfill any contracts already in place.
The policy shift is a radical one for the arms manufacturer. It was never officially announced, but was put into the company’s latest financial report in March and was confirmed at its annual general meeting in August, The Guardian said.
When Germany changed its regulations on gun sales to the Middle East in 2015, Heckler & Koch's earnings slipped from $72 million in 2014 to only $29 million in 2015.
The company has pledged to sell only to “green countries,” defined as NATO or NATO-equivalent countries (Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand) and well as those that pass Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index and the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index, The Guardian reported.
Company directors also have discussed a compensation fund for victims of its guns, although no clear guidelines for such a fund have been determined.
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