The Council on Ethics recommends that the companies Compagnie de l'Odet SE (Cie de l’Odet) and Bolloré SE be excluded from investment by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) due to the risk that the companies are contributing to serious and systematic human rights abuses. This recommendation relates primarily to working conditions at oil palm plantations in Cameroon and their consequences for local communities.

Cie de l’Odet and Bolloré are holding companies listed on the Euronext stock exchange in Paris. At the close of 2023, the GPFG owned 1.15 per cent of the Bolloré’s shares, worth USD 84.5 million. The GPFG owned 0.13 per cent of the shares in Cie de l'Odet, worth USD 14.1 million.

Cie de l’Odet owns 62,19 per cent of the shares in Bolloré. Bolloré has considerable ownership interests in rubber and oil palm plantations in several countries in Africa and Asia, including Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), in which Bolloré has a 39.75 per cent shareholding. Socfin controls Socfinaf, which is, in turn, the controlling shareholder of Socapalm. Bolloré has direct and indirect shareholdings in Socfinaf totalling 34.4 per cent.

The Council’s own inquiries into Socapalm’s plantation operations in Cameroon have revealed serious norm violations, including extensive sexual harassment of women by supervisors and security guards at the plantation. The abuses concern both women who work at Socapalm plantations and those who are passing through the plantation or the surrounding areas. More than half of Socapalm’s workforce are contract workers or day labourers. The inquiries showed that almost none of them have an employment contract, they earn less than the legal minimum wage, have their pay docked for social benefits they do not receive, and can be hired and fired at will. For the women, the provision of sexual services has become a way to secure a job or avoid being fired. In addition, Socapalm has extended the plantation to areas belonging to local communities and made it difficult for them to access their properties, which weakens the population’s ability to make a living.

Similar human rights abuses have for many years been reported at several of Socfin’s plantations in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Council on Ethics considers that Cie de l’Odet and Bolloré are contributing to these norm violations, which are both serious and systematic.

Neither Cie de l’Odet nor Bolloré have provided information in connection with this matter. The companies maintain that they hold minority stakes in Socfin and therefore have no influence over how the plantations are operated. Lack of formal control over the plantations is not decisive for the Council’s assessment. Cie de l’Odet has controlling interest in Bolloré. Bolloré has, and has always had, a material ownership interest in Socfin and Socfinaf. Bolloré’s senior executives have served on Socfin’s board of directors since 1990 and on Socfinaf’s board of directors since 1993. In the Council’s opinion, this indicates that Bolloré should have sufficient influence to improve the situation at the plantations if the company so wished. It seems to the Council as though neither Cie de l’Odet nor Bolloré acknowledge the risk of contributing to serious norm violations relating to the plantation business and therefore does nothing to put an end to them.

The Council concludes that this raises the risk that the companies, also in future, will contribute to serious and systematic human rights abuses to an unacceptable level...