Mired in a major international corruption scandal, the proposed Punta Catalina coal plant in the Dominican Republic became untouchable for Deutsche Bank, ING, Santander, Société Générale and Unicredit in 2017. As the gravity of the situation surrounding the project’s construction company Odebrecht intensified, the five bank consortium suspended its financing of the project, triggering a panicked turn to the international bond markets by the Dominican government in order to find some way of keeping the project afloat. BankTrack maintained regular contact with the lead consortium banks throughout the year, in tandem with our Dominican partner group National Committee to Combat Climate Change (CNLCC). We brought CNLCC’s Enrique de León to the AGMs of Deutsche Bank and Société Générale where he received public assurances from senior bank executives that they would be taking a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to corruption at Punta Catalina.  

In February, BankTrack coordinated and sent an open letter to the 11 banks that signed a Discussion Paper by the Thun Group, calling for the paper's withdrawal. The paper took as its starting point that banks do not contribute to human rights abuses through their finance, flying in the face of UN advice on banks’ human rights responsibilities. The concerns raised in the letter were quickly echoed by others, and following further discussions the paper was revised in December, partially addressing the concerns. 

In 2013 the seven-strong Thun Group of Banks' produced a discussion paper on banks' responsibilities under new UN human rights guidelines. BankTrack's response to the paper highlighted that the banks had failed to address their responsibility to provide access to remedy to victims of human rights abuses. After we pushed the point further at a conference with the banks in 2014, they agreed to "explore options for addressing ... access to remedy." We look forward to the outcome.

In March 2012, following pressure campaigns from BankTrack and others, Bank Austria (part of Unicredit) announced it had closed down an important credit line for the funding of the construction of the Mochovce nuclear reactors 3 & 4 in Slovakia. These reactors are Soviet-type VVER 440 2nd generation reactors, which are designed without a full containment building and cannot be upgraded. As such there is a higher probability of severe accidents and the release of radioactivity. Stopping this credit line is one more obstacle for these plants to ever be build.