Banktrack’s "Dodgy Deals" – a Pre-emptive Tool to Private Banks Financing Destructive Projects
On the one hand, banks, especially private banks, love to keep their secrecy and they hate bad reputation. Environmental and human rights campaigners, on the other hand, love to have a maximum influence on projects they work on: Prevent destructive projects or at least mitigate negative effects as far as possible. One way to do this is to work on the financing, which is easiest before a contract between a bank and a project promoter is signed.
If one brings together all these ingredients and mix them, adding a large number of environmental and human rights organisations, one may end up with the tool “dodgy deals” as can be found on the BankTrack website. BankTrack is a network of civil society organisations and individuals, tracking the operations of the private financial sector (commercial banks, investors, insurance companies, pension funds) and its effect on people and the planet. An extra section of BankTrack’s website lists dodgy projects that are looking for money. Sometimes they already have secured funds and potentially look for more sometimes they are still at very early stages and haven’t found money yet.
The section allows a bank manager confronted with a request for finance for a certain project to easily check whether there are any environmental, social or human rights problems with the project and whether there is resistance against the project which would then raise the reputational risk for the bank. The joker from the point of view of a banker is that looking up the dodgy deals section can be done while keeping one’s secrecy. The joker from the point of view of a campaigner is that the sheer listing of dodgy projects might keep banks off the financing.
The section gives sector, a short description, lists the dodgy aspects of a given project, lists the companies involved as well as the banks that are, or have been, or may be financing, the policies applicable for the project, the current status and what must happen.
The section includes pulp mills, oil sands, large dams, iron ore, gold, and coal mines, oil and gas projects as well as nuclear projects.
Examples of dodgy deals can be found here:
