Several NGOs have filed a complaint against the French bank BNP Paribas accusing it of financing a Brazilian agribusiness giant, which they accuse of contributing to deforestation, the grabbing of indigenous territories and forced labor, they said. announced Monday.
This complaint, filed by the Brazilian NGO Comisso Pastoral da Terra (CPT) and the French association Notre Affaire Tous with the Paris court, comes four days after BNP Paribas was sued by three other associations for the defense of the environment for its significant contribution to global warming, due to its oil and gas customers.
It follows a formal notice issued at the end of October by CPT and Notre Affaire all demanding that BNP Paribas cease its financial support of Marfrig, Brazil’s second-largest meat-packing company which they claim was responsible for more than 120,000 hectares of illegal deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savannah between 2009 and 2020.
The associations accuse BNP Paribas of having violated the French law on the duty of vigilance which requires multinationals based in France to establish a plan that includes reasonable vigilance measures to identify risks and prevent serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the health and safety of people and the environment, resulting from the activities of the company and those of the companies it controls in France and abroad.
Despite its commitments and its communications (…), the evidence accumulated on the support of BNP Marfrig and the lack of vigilance of Marfrig vis–vis its suppliers reveal the insufficiency of the measures taken by BNP. We cannot turn a blind eye to deforestation and forced labor and claim to be an actor of change and carbon neutrality, argued Jérmie Suissa, general delegate of Notre Affaire Tous, in a press release on Monday.
Contact by AFP, BNP said it regretted that the NGOs are taking the path of litigation rather than that of dialogue.
The bank also stressed that it required that by 2025 its customers have a strategy zero deforestation in their production and supply chains but also full traceability of the supply chains (direct and indirect) of beef and soybeans from the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado, adding that it will no longer provide products or services financial to companies that will not be aligned with this policy.