Glencore, the largest mining company listed on the JSE and headed by South African Ivan Glasenberg, has been accused in a new 245-page report of mining and exporting \u201cblood coal\u201d from Colombia.<\/p>\n
The report, \u201cThe Dark Side of Coal\u201d,\u00a0 published by Dutch nongovernmental organisation PAX in Germany last week, says that Glencore\u2019s Colombian arm, Prodeco, secretly supported the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC) during that country\u2019s bloody civil war.<\/p>\n
The AUC was listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation in 2005 and demobilised in 2006 after peace negotiations with the Colombian government. Colombia has not resolved its problems yet and the government is still negotiating with left-wing FARC guerrillas in Cuba.<\/p>\n
Although the accusations against Glencore date back more than a decade, the report is likely to heighten scrutiny of the way it operates in some of its coal markets.<\/p>\n
It has faced claims of tax dodging in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo and of selling materials to Iran for its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n
In South Africa, communities who live on its coal mines in Belfast, Mpumalanga, accused Glencore of trampling their rights to blast for new mines in March. Glencore, which is South Africa\u2019s largest exporter of coal, has denied all these claims.<\/p>\n
In the Colombian case, Glencore is said to have supported the AUC to counter kidnappings and attacks on infrastructure conducted by left-wing guerrilla groups FARC and the ELN.<\/p>\n
The new Colombian accusations are based largely on the testimony of Jos\u00e9 del Carmen Gelvez Alvarrac\u00edn, known as \u201cEl Canoso\u201d,\u00a0 who was first hired as an intelligence agent by the Colombian army and then became a defence contractor for Glencore\u2019s security department in 1996, before joining the AUC in 2003.<\/p>\n
Gelvez described meetings that took place since 1996 between the AUC and Glencore\u2019s security department head, Manuel Guti\u00e9rrez.<\/p>\n
He testified that he and Glencore\u2019s managers, Manuel Guti\u00e9rrez and Luis Ochoa, \u201cdrove in a pick-up truck to a farm named La Ucrania …<\/p>\n
\u201cOn entering, we saw approximately 30 people dressed in camouflage, who introduced us to the commander who went by the alias Lucho,\u201d says the PAX report.<\/p>\n
\u201cManuel Guti\u00e9rrez, as head of the security department, spoke on behalf of the company, Prodeco, about providing this group of the AUC with whatever support it might need.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was clear that there was a direct link between the company and the AUC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Glencore has criticised the report for being one-sided and uncritical in terms of evaluating the testimonies of former paramilitaries.<\/p>\n
The company said it had contacted the human rights organisations involved in March, when the report was being written, but PAX did not include its objections in the final draft.<\/p>\n
Last month, Glencore\u2019s head of sustainability, Dr Michael Fahrbach, sent a letter to PAX saying: \u201cThe report is distorted and unbalanced, and blindly follows accusations made by a condemned criminal, which came up years ago, in a judicial hearing to which we had no access and didn\u2019t have the right to be heard.\u201d – South African Sunday Times Business Report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Glencore, the largest mining company listed on the JSE and headed by South African Ivan Glasenberg, has been accused in a new 245-page report of mining and exporting \u201cblood coal\u201d from Colombia. The report, \u201cThe Dark Side of Coal\u201d,\u00a0 published by Dutch nongovernmental organisation PAX in Germany last week, says that Glencore\u2019s Colombian arm, Prodeco, … Continue reading “Glencore accused of funding Colombian terrorist group”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[3093,41,9627,983],"class_list":["post-15085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-and-finance","category-news","tag-colombia","tag-glencore","tag-ivan-glasenberg","tag-terrorism"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15086,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15085\/revisions\/15086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}