MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The household of a murdered Honduran activist filed a petition with prosecutors within the Netherlands on Tuesday to induce a criminal probe into a Dutch improvement financial institution that financed a Honduran infrastructure challenge linked to her killing.
Environmentalist Berta Caceres was organizing to cease a hydroelectric dam’s building on lands of the indigenous Lenca individuals when she was shot lifeless in 2016.
The 138-page petition, ready by the Amsterdam-based Global Justice Association, argues that financial institution FMO ignored warnings of potential graft and fraud whereas offering thousands and thousands of {dollars} to the challenge.
FMO didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The financial institution has mentioned it carried out environmental research and consulted the area people, then exited the challenge after Caceres’ killing. FMO additionally says it has since improved its human rights insurance policies.
The Dutch public prosecutors’ workplace didn’t reply instantly to a request for remark.
Caceres’ household desires prosecutors to analyze whether or not FMO violated anti-money laundering and different monetary legal guidelines, and whether or not it could possibly be held answerable for complicity in violence surrounding the challenge, together with Caceres’ homicide.
FMO is already the goal of one other civil lawsuit within the Netherlands, during which Caceres’ household alleges the financial institution contributed to human rights violations. FMO has mentioned it’s searching for a settlement.
Earlier this month, Roberto David Castillo, former president of Desarrollos Energeticos (Desa), the Honduran energy firm financed by FMO, was sentenced to greater than 22 years for taking part in Caceres’ homicide.
Bertha Caceres, daughter of the slain activist, mentioned she hopes a Dutch criminal probe might reveal “the faces of these whose cash enabled the assaults in opposition to the Lenca individuals.”
The hydroelectric challenge additionally acquired financing from the Finnish state funding fund Finnfund and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. The petition in opposition to FMO doesn’t ask for criminal investigations into both.
(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey and Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City; Additional reporting by Stephanie Van Den Berg in The Hague; modifying by Richard Pullin)
