May 15, 2013 10:33 am
By Martin Hesse, Jorg Schmitt and Wieland Wagner
Vietnamese companies have been ruthlessly taking advantage of Laotian locals and their environment to create vast rubber plantations. The “rubber lords” are also getting support for the land grabs from Germany’s Deutsche Bank, which is violating its ethics and sustainability policies, critics say.
A haggard man wearing only shorts squats on the tiny porch of his wooden shack. The 27-year-old from the Laotian village of Ban Hatxan lives here with his wife and parents. Lying before him are three lifeless lizards, their dinner. Three chickens are running around beneath his pile dwelling, and there is also a pig. This is all the family has left.
The young farmer, who prefers not to give his name out of fear of reprisal, is a refugee. He fled from the Vietnamese company Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), which operates vast rubber plantations here in Laos. The Vietnamese in this region are known as the “rubber lords.”
“They came onto my property three years ago without warning,” the farmer says. Since he was a child, his family had lived on the patch of land, extracting oil from palm fruits. “We were able to make a living from it,” he says. But then HAGL sent in its clearing squad. “They felled the trees and burnt the rest down, including our house.”
More than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) separate Germany from Laos and Vietnam. But HAGL also receives funds and support for its land grab in Southeast Asia via Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank. A fund operated by its subsidiary DWS also has direct investments in HAGL, as well as in a second Vietnamese raw-materials company, a subsidiary of the Vietnam Rubber Group. What’s more, the bank helped HAGL get listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The story shows how Western financial corporations want to get in on the success of emerging markets like Vietnam at any price — and how this leads them to support the ruthless exploitation of raw materials used to satisfy the hunger of China and other economic powers, often at the expense of the environment and the indigenous population.
Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/deutsche-bank-backs-ruthless-rubber-lords-in-laos-a-899324.html
