• AIIB President can decide about many projects on his own
• Standards of other multilateral banks not met
• China could abuse bank for its geopolitical interests
The NGOs Greenpeace Norway, Framtiden i våre hender (FIVH) and Urgewald have again trawled through the Norway’s Oil Fund holdings portfolio and identified 32 companies that should have been excluded under the coal exclusion criteria. The Fund is also invested in 16 companies that are building new coal-fired power plants. The numbers don’t lie – Norway’s Oil Fund has $7.2 billion invested in the global coal industry.
Ute Koczy, World Bank campaigner at Urgewald, comments on the nomination of US Treasury Under Secretary David Malpass as the next President of the World Bank Group, which was reported by insiders:
"This way of determining the next World Bank President perpetuates an unfortunate tradition: ruthlessly and exclusively in the interest of the US government. The selection committee is already useless before it could even begin with interviewing possible candidates..."
Urgewald Human Rights Campaigner Knud Voecking comments on the resignation of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim:
"Here goes a president weary of office. Kim's growing reluctance to properly run his office was obvious in recent months. His direct move into the investment industry without any 'cooling off' is a scandal."
On December 5th during the 2018 UN Climate Summit in Katowice, BankTrack and Urgewald will publish new data exposing which banks and investors are financing the world’s top 120 Coal Plant Developers. The NGOs' research covers the period between January 2016 and September 2018 and shows that global financial institutions are undermining the Paris Climate Goals by still supporting the expansion of the world's coal plant fleet with almost USD 480 billion.