Some of the world’s largest banks, including JPMorgan, Standard Chartered and HSBC, may be complicit in projects linked to Saudi Arabia’s green energy boom which are “plagued by migrant worker abuse”, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has warned.

The UK non-profit tracked 40 projects in Saudi Arabia that form part of the country’s renewables industry and interviewed Nepali and Bangladeshi workers employed on nine projects, of which it named five in a report published on Thursday.

The report identified 25 financiers which provided project financing to these projects, including 11 banks that financed at least two.

“I imagine from the responses we’ve received that [banks] see this as a reputational risk, but also a risk to their wider operations”, Catriona Fraser, migrant workers researcher at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, told The Banker.

Standard Chartered, Riyad Bank and Mizuho Financial Group financed all five projects, while Banque Saudi Fransi, Saudi National Bank, HSBC and Saudi Awwal Bank financed four projects.

First Abu Dhabi Bank and Korea Development Bank were among the lenders that financed two projects…

Recruitment fee charges, wage theft and unsafe conditions such as extreme heat exposure were among the issues documented across Saudi Arabia’s clean-energy projects, including the multibillion-dollar Neom Green Hydrogen complex…