Multilateral Banks

WASHINGTON, DC -- Environmental groups in Germany and the US released a new report today that provides conclusive evidence that the German Bank Westdeutsche Landesbank (WestLB) violated its own policies in loaning $900 million to the OCP Consortium building Ecuador's new heavy crude pipeline. The independent report written by Robert Goodland, former Chief of the Environmental Department of the World Bank, found, ''substantial non-compliance with all four applicable WBG's [World Bank Group] Social and Environmental Safeguard Policies.'' Specifically, the report found violations of World Bank Operational Policies on Environmental Assessment, Natural Habitats, Involuntary Resettlement, and Indigenous Peoples. Read More

MASERU, Lesotho -- Advocates of corporate accountability are pointing to the sweeping implications of a landmark verdict delivered Tuesday by the High Court in the tiny kingdom of Lesotho that a Canadian multinational company was guilty of paying bribes to win contracts on a dam project. Read More

WASHINGTON, DC -- The construction of a 650 mile long buried pipeline to carry oil from landlocked Chad in central Africa to Cameroon's Atlantic coast is one step closer to reality over the objections of environmental and human rights groups. Read More

WASHINGTON -- Advocates for global justice today announced their plans to quarantine finance ministers and corporate executives gathering in Washington at the end of September. Critics remedies will include demonstrations, teach-ins, vigils, and debates before and during the annual meetings of the Boards of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Thousands of people are expected to converge on Washington to quarantine delegates to the IMF/World Bank annual meetings. Read More

The U.S. administration's backing of a $30 billion loan package arranged for Brazil by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) marks an abrupt change in President George W. Bush's policy of not bailing out developing countries, and its impact may be seen in the results of October elections in the hemisphere's biggest country. Read More

In time for this month's World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), environmental justice and human rights NGO groundWork today launches a series of five booklets entitled South African People and Environments in the Global Market. Today, we also release the full agenda for the Corporate Accountability Week taking place from the 20th - 23rd August in Sandton. Read More

Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT), the Ranking Member of the International Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee, today called for an immediate Congressional investigation of the recent $30 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout of Brazil. Read More

Brazil's currency and stock prices soared Thursday on optimism that a $30 billion aid package from the International Monetary Fund will calm skittish investors, although the underlying problems that fed market anxieties haven't gone away. Read More

US should take an honest look at what has happened to most low- and middle-income countries during the past 20 years. Read More

The Senate is investigating the role of private investment banks in the Enron scandal. Could public institutions, like the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank be next? Read More