World Bank's "Sustainability" Arm Covertly Funded Massive Australian Coal Mine

[hatrack]

Adani’s Carmichael mine has been “covertly funded” by the World Bank through a private arm that is supposed to back “sustainable development”, according to a US-based human rights organisation.

Adani Enterprises acquired exploration rights for Australia’s largest proposed coalmine in 2010 with a US$250m loan from banks including India’s ICICI, which was in turn bankrolled by the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, a report by Inclusive Development International says.

The report accuses the World Bank of using “back channels” to conceal its support for a company that “would have little chance of receiving direct assistance from the IFC”, which has a “mandate for sustainable development”. ICICI was among six Indian banks that received US$520m from the IFC between 2005 and 2014.

EDIT

The Adani group is also embroiled in several Indian criminal investigations into possible fraud and corruption, including the alleged siphoning of money offshore through an invoicing rort and the alleged profiteering on imported coal through inflated valuations. An Indian subsidiary of the Australian project’s parent company, Adani Enterprises, was accused by its own lawyer this year of fraud, illegal land purchases and other violations over a solar project. Adani has denied wrongdoing in all cases. The Greens have pointed out that Adani paid $39,000 in tax on $487m in earnings from its Australian enterprises in 2014-15. An environmental lawyer and a Greens state candidate Michael Berkman said that equated to a “measly” 0.008% of Australian income.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/22/adani-coalmine-covertly-funded-by-world-bank-says-report

[pscot]

1. Australia and India

have become a kind of environmental Axis of Evil. Oz is bulldozing a rain forest to get at the coal.