Warren Anderson was the chairman and chief executive of Union Carbide Corporation, once one of the largest chemical polymer companies in the United States. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1921 to Swedish immigrant parents.
At Union Carbide until his retirement in 1986, he was charged with manslaughter in the Bhopal gas leak disaster. He was arrested and later released on bail by the Madhya Pradesh police in Bhopal in December 1984. He was declared a fugitive when he refused to return to the country.
Anderson, who was charged with culpable homicide on the tragedy, which is also considered to be the world’s worst industrial disaster, currently lives a luxurious life in New York. Named after former president of the US, Warren Harding, he presently lives with wife Lillian Anderson.
According to Greenpeace, Anderson knew about a 1982 safety audit of the Bhopal plant, which identified 30 major hazards. Rather than fixing them in Bhopal, only the company’s identical plant in the US was fixed.
After the explosion and the leak of poisonous gas from the Bhopal plant, Anderson flew down to India only to get arrested. He subsequently jumped bail and was flown by a private jet back to the US. Dow Chemicals took over Union Carbide in 2001 but it claims Union Carbide had settled the issue of the Bhopal disaster.
Despite being wanted by India and Interpol, Indian and US authorities have been inactive in the past 18 years. Indian authorities are believed to have filed a formal extradition request with the US after domestic pressure.
It is believed Anderson’s yearly golf club membership is three-four times the average compensation of a gas tragedy survivor.