World Bank slammed for Honduras dealings
January 10, 2014, 04:46 pm
By Erik Wasson
An arm of the World Bank has been faulted in an internal investigation released
Friday for its dealings with a Honduran palm oil company accused of murder and
involvement in drug trafficking.
The ombudsman’s report is being
called one of the most serious reprimands the bank has faced.
The Bank’s International Finance
Corporation (IFC) did not take sufficient precautions in making a
multimillion-dollar investment in Honduras’
Corporación Dinant, the report found.
Dinant has been accused of
violating land rights, allowing its land to be used for drug trafficking and of
being complicit in the killings of 132 peasants.
The IFC’s internal investigation
conducted by its ombudsman’s office, found that the IFC “did not identify
conflict and security risks associated with the project that should have been
evident given information available at the time.”
It also failed to investigate the
reputation of Dinant or consult with local communities.
Perhaps most troubling, the report
found “IFC did not assure itself that the use of force by client security
personnel was exclusively for preventative and defensive purposes.”
In an official response, the IFC
said that it disagreed with some of the findings but would apply others to
improve its risk management processes.
The Financial Times quoted a
spokesman for Dinant denying any connection to the killings of peasants.
“We have absolutely nothing to do”
with the killings, spokesman Roger Pineda was quoted as saying.
Honduras
Note: John D. Negroponte
was the U.S. ambassador for Honduras,
and is married to Diana Villiers
Negroponte.
Diana
Villiers Negroponte is married to John
D. Negroponte, and was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
A.W.
Clausen was an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and the president for the World Bank.
David
Dollar was the country director for China
and Mongolia
for the World Bank, and is a senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
Robert S. McNamara
was the president for the World Bank, and an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
was a managing director for the World Bank, and a visiting
fellow at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
James D. Wolfensohn
was the president for the World Bank, and an honorary
trustee at the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
George Soros
is the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, and Jim Yong Kim was a guest at his 2013
wedding.
No comments:
Post a Comment