World Bank Arm Admits Wrongs in Honduras Loan
World Bank Arm Admits Wrongs in Honduras Loan
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 24 2014 (IPS) - In an unusual statement, the World Bank’s private-sector arm has threatened to cancel a controversial investment in a Honduran palm oil company that has been implicated in serious human rights abuses, including numerous killings, over the past five years.
The statement came two weeks after the release of a damning report by the Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman (CAO) of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) that concluded, among other things, that Bank officials should have raised serious questions about the alleged complicity in those abuses by Corporacion Dinant before approving a 30- million-dollar loan to the company in 2008.
The company, which is owned by Miguel Facusse Barjum, “the wealthiest, most powerful businessman in the country,” according to a State Department cable obtained by Wikileaks, is based in the lower AguanValley, a region populated by hundreds of campesino cooperatives established there as a result of a far-reaching land-reform programme initiated in the 1960s.
Conflicts over Dinant’s efforts to buy up these communities’ lands under a 1992 law designed to favour the country’s burgeoning privately-owned agro-export industry, account for many of the abuses.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/01/world-bank-arm-admits-wrongs-honduras-loan/
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World Bank lending arm forced into U-turn after Honduras loan row
IFC changes stance after lukewarm response to damning report over dealings with Dinant palm oil firm sparked anger
• Bank's ethics under scrutiny after Honduras loan inquiry
Nina Lakhani
theguardian.com, Thursday 23 January 2014 12.27 EST
[font size=1]
Ramon Mundia outside his makeshift home in Bajo Aguán, where landowner Miguel
Facussé has clashed with farmers. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP[/font]
The World Bank's private lending arm has been forced into a U-turn over its dealings with a Honduran palm oil company accused of assassinations and forced evictions of peasant farmers.
On Wednesday evening, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) admitted failures in the implementation of its own social and environmental policies when approving a $30m (£18.2m) loan to Corporation Dinant, an agribusiness owned by one of Honduras's richest and most powerful industrialists Miguel Facussé.
The IFC pledged to beef up its demands of Dinant, which is accused of using violence to deal with land conflicts in the Bajo Aguán valley, after criticism from the World Bank Group board last week.
This volte-face comes two weeks after its original lukewarm response to a damning investigation by the World Bank's internal watchdog, the Office of the Compliance Adviser/Ombudsman (CAO), which found multiple ethical failures in the IFC's handling of the Dinant loan.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jan/23/world-bank-ifc-forced-uturn-honduras-dinant
