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29 Jun 2022

Honduras: Complicity criminal complaint and investigations on responsibility of Dutch bank FMO in the Agua Zarca project arise after judgment of DESA's former President

COPINH

Justice in the Agua Zarca case has been served in the last few weeks, after a series of delays to the reading of the judgment of Roberto David Castillo, former president of the hydrolectric firm DESA, and responsible for the Agua Zarca project in Honduras. The intellectual author of the murder of the indigenous leader Berta Cáceres was sentenced to 22 years of imprisonment by a local tribunal last 20 June 2022.

Meanwhile, media investigations into the link between the murder and funding from Dutch bank FMO and German Deutsche Bank have revealed a set of legal and financial documents that show the alleged flow of international funding in the days leading up to March 2, 2016, the date of Berta Cáceres' assassination. Lawyers assert that there was 'severe negligence' in failure to monitor funding for DESA's Agua Zarca dam project.

Morevoer, on 28 June 2022, Berta Cáceres’ daughter filed a criminal complaint in the Netherlands for FMO’s alleged criminal responsibility on complicity to the acts of violence and corruption following the funding of the project by the bank which has a 51% participation of governmental source.

“At the time of the FMO financing, my mother and several NGOs had already warned the FMO that…there was violence against the indigenous Lenca people and that they had not given their consent. However, FMO decided to go ahead. The FMO executive director stated in interviews that FMO almost never abandons projects once they have started”, said Berta Zúñiga Cáceres.

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