Banking giant ANZ is financing a Cambodian sugar plantation that has involved child labour, military-backed land grabs, forced evictions and food shortages.ANZ's support of the Phnom Penh Sugar Company's plantation is disclosed in confidential audits that reveal the project is beset by a series of social and environmental problems.The revelation raises serious questions over the bank's due diligence process and its compliance with a global ethical banking code it is a signatory to, as well as its own policies.Senior ANZ executives this week met representatives of the more than 1000 families forcibly removed from their homes in 2010 to make way for the sugar crop owned by Ly Yong Phat, one of Cambodia's richest men and a senator from the country's ruling political party.The executives were told of a former Khmer Rouge battalion's involvement in the evictions and how families got $100 compensation for land that once provided them with food and a livelihood.
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Monday, September 15, 2014