Juliet Kabuhgo remembers clearly when she met the father of her child. She was 17 years old.

“He called me several days in a row and asked me to meet him down at the market. One day I went down there and met him. He told me he loved me, but I didn’t understand because we had never met. After two weeks, he started sending me money. First 20,000 shillings, then 30,000 shillings (55 Danish kroner). Then he demanded that we have sex. I tried to refuse him, but he insisted,” she says.

Juliet Kabuhgo, who is 22 years old today, is one of 31 girls and women who say that from 2018 to 2022, they were impregnated and then abandoned by employees at the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project, two hydropower plants where Danish energy company Frontier Energy is the majority shareholder.

Danwatch’s partner, the television station NTV Uganda, visited the village of Kyarumba at the foot of the tree-covered slopes of the Rwenzori Mountains and interviewed seven of the affected girls and women, as well as a number of other sources in the local area.

The women and girls talk about being persuaded and pressured into sex by men under contract with the Sri Lankan company VS Hydro, which built the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project for Frontier Energy, and how they struggle to support themselves and their children today.

The fathers who came to Kyarumba from other parts of Uganda and Sri Lanka have all left the area again and the mothers are not able to get in touch with them.

“When I told him I was pregnant, he refused to believe it. Instead, he demanded that we have sex again,” says Juliet Kabuhgo. “I agreed because otherwise I was afraid he wouldn’t take responsibility for the baby. Afterwards, I tried to call him several times, but he just told me that it wasn’t his child and that I should have an abortion,” she says.

Kyarumba is located in the foothills of the Rwenzori Mountains, located in the border area between Uganda and DR Congo. Video: Joel Kaguta / NTV Uganda

According to Ivan Bwambale, the politically elected chairman of the Kyarumba sub-county council, an area in western Uganda with just over 25,000 inhabitants, fourteen of the girls were under the age of 18 when they became pregnant.

This is despite the fact that it is illegal in Uganda to have sex with anyone under the age of 18.

“Some of the girls were as young as 15-16 years old, and there are also four who have been diagnosed with HIV,” he says. “It’s a very unfortunate situation and we hope that these single mothers will soon get some help,” he says.

Who is Frontier Energy?

  • Frontier Energy is a Danish company that invests in green energy in Africa. The company was founded in 2011 and has offices in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Copenhagen.
  • In addition to the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project, Frontier Energy is involved in five other hydropower plants in Uganda.
  • Frontier Energy holds a majority stake in the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project through its project companies, Rwenzori Hydro and Nyamagasani 2 HPP Ltd.
  • The Confederation of Danish Industry was a founding member of Frontier Energy, but is no longer part of the company. Frontier Energy receives funding from, among others, Danish pension funds and a number of European development institutions.

Ivan Bwambale’s information is confirmed by several local sources that NTV Uganda has spoken to.

The Danish company behind the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project, Frontier Energy, did not wish to participate in an oral interview with Danwatch. However, the company writes in an email response that they are aware of the case and are investigating it further.

“This is a matter we take very seriously,” writes Anders Hauch, Investment Director at Frontier Energy.

However, he declines to go into details.

“Unfortunately, out of consideration for the group of people who have contacted us, we cannot comment publicly on the specific aspects of this case. This would be unethical and contrary to the guidelines we try to comply with in this area,” Anders Hauch writes.

Ignored the warning

It started well, Ivan Bwambale remembers.

In 2017, when Frontier Energy began the construction of the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project, the locals welcomed the construction. Kyarumba is located in a remote, inaccessible mountainous terrain and does not attract a lot of major Western investment.

“There was a lot of activity in the area. We had high expectations that the local economy would take off,” says Ivan Bwambale.

But in the summer of 2021, the city council chairman started receiving inquiries from concerned parents. They told us that employees at the hydropower plants had impregnated their daughters and now didn’t want to acknowledge the children.

“I investigated the matter further and made a report describing the situation and what the individual girls had told me. I submitted it to Frontier Energy, but we never heard from them,” says Ivan Bwambale.

Danwatch and NTV Uganda have seen the report that the council chairman submitted to Frontier Energy in July 2021. Danwatch has also been in contact with the local employee who received it. This person no longer works for Frontier Energy and does not wish to be named.

“I passed it on in the system, but then nothing more happened. I’m sorry about that, because the girls should have been helped,” the former employee tells Danwatch.

Frontier Energy confirms today that they received an inquiry about the matter in 2021 without acting on it.

“The request was received by a local employee in the project company, who correctly forwarded it to his superior, who unfortunately never forwarded it to the management. We will try to find out why and see if we need to adjust our procedure to minimise the risk of this happening again. We can only regret that the matter was not brought forward at the time,” writes Investment Director Anders Hauch in an email to Danwatch.

The missed inquiry was realised when Frontier Energy was contacted again about the matter in May 2023 – this time not from Ivan Bwambale.

“In accordance with our procedures for handling such inquiries, our employees asked the group to collectively or individually contact us verbally or in writing so that we could assess the case and, if necessary, contact the contractor responsible for the construction of the facility,” Anders Hauch writes and continues:

“To date, we have not received any inquiries. Notwithstanding this, however, as part of our ongoing community engagement, we have been in dialogue with various stakeholders on the topic,” he writes.

One of Jane Mbambu’s daughters. Video: Joel Kaguta / NTV Uganda

Hard to afford food and medicine

One of the concerned parents who approached council chairman Ivan Bwambale in the summer of 2021 was Jane Mbambu.

Two of her daughters have had children with employees of the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project. They were 17 and 19 years old, respectively, when they got pregnant. Both were still in school.

Without fathers to provide for her daughters and their children, Jane Mbambu has herself had to step in and help. But it’s hard to afford it all.

“I take jobs in other people’s farms to be able to support them all. The fathers have left, so it has been me who has had to pay for food and doctor’s visits,” she says.

Jovia Biira tells a similar story.

She became pregnant and infected with HIV when she had sex with a hydropower plant employee three years ago – at the age of 24. He approached her one day at the local market where she was selling tomatoes. He offered her money to be with him, and when she got pregnant, he cut all contact and disappeared.

Today, Jovia Biira has left Kyarumba. Both her parents are dead, but she had hoped that her six brothers would help her take care of the baby.

“They have all rejected me. They don’t want to have a child in their home that they don’t know the father of,” says Jovia Biira.

The stories from Kyarumba do not surprise Kristine Mærkedahl Jensen, International Manager at Sex & Samfund.

“We know that early and unwanted pregnancies in countries like Uganda often trap girls and women in a vicious socio-economic spiral. The pregnancies become a burden they have to carry for the rest of their lives. Especially because single parenthood is still perceived as a huge shame in Uganda. Girls and women find it harder to afford food, education and healthcare, both for themselves and their children,” she says.

  • “Unfortunately, out of consideration for the group of people who have contacted us, we cannot publicly comment on the specific aspects of this case. This would be unethical and contrary to the guidelines we are trying to comply with in this area. However, we can confirm that our project company was made aware of the case in May 2023 and that we in our management company and our employees in the project company in question are investigating the details of the allegations against employees of the independent contractor hired by the project company to build the hydropower plant. This is a matter we take very seriously.”

Was the type of social impact described here part of your impact assessment prior to the project?

  • “Ever since Frontier Energy was founded about 12 years ago, we have had Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) at the core of our renewable energy investment activities in Africa. Our ESG requirements are based on a number of standards, the most important of which are the IFC Performance Standards, which are the most widely used standards for infrastructure investments in emerging markets.”
  • “We are committed to ensuring that we comply with our ESG requirements and therefore have a dedicated team of specialists in both our management company and portfolio companies who are focused on the environmental and social aspects of our projects and who are in direct and continuous contact with the local community.”
  • “As standard practice, we always conduct comprehensive Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIA) in accordance with IFC Performance Standards prior to any investment. These studies always include consultation with local communities and other stakeholders and must be approved by the relevant environmental authority in the country concerned before a project can be implemented.”
  • “A standard assessment in all ESIAs is how a given project will affect the local population in the area surrounding the project. One element that is almost always identified as a risk is that a major construction project, due to the influx of labour and more money, can lead to an increased risk of violations, unwanted pregnancies and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.”

Experts explain that this type of problem is well known and quite expected on a project like Nyamagasani Hydro Power. Did you make a special effort to prevent this type of problem?

  • “We agree with that. That’s why we have a Code of Conduct for our own employees in project companies and our management company that addresses their behaviour and interaction with the local population and we have systems in place that should catch if our employees violate the Code of Conduct (Grievance Redress Mechanism).”
  • “In addition, we have provisions in the project companies’ contracts with contractors and other contract partners that require the contractor to comply with the law and various relevant standards (including IFC Performance Standards) and to address identified social and environmental risks in the local community. We continuously monitor the contractors’ work, including their compliance with the requirements in our contracts with them, using our own employees in the project companies as well as external consultants. In addition to our monitoring, we always establish community Grievance Redress Mechanisms where we collect complaints from the local population. We also have ongoing dialogue with the local community to identify areas in need of improvement.”
  • “Furthermore, we integrate regular awareness campaigns on HIV/AIDS and the use of contraception throughout the construction phase to both local communities and women’s groups, as well as to employees of the companies responsible for the construction of our facilities, which aim to reduce unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases that occur both as a result of and independent of our activities. As part of these activities, we also ensure that contractors provide free condoms to their employees.”
  • “These measures were also implemented at the Nyamagasani project. However, it should be noted that our work with awareness campaigns and dialogue with the local community was hampered by the very restrictive COVID-19 measures in Uganda for most of 2020 and 2021.”

When did Frontier Energy first learn about the case?

  • “In May 2023, one of our project company employees received an informal inquiry on the matter, after which it was presented to the project company’s management, as well as our ESG Manager and the relevant project managers in our management company.”
  • “In accordance with our Grievance Redress Mechanism procedures, our employees asked the group to collectively or individually approach us verbally or in writing so that we could assess the case and, if necessary, approach the contractor responsible for the construction of the facility.”
  • “To date, we have not received any inquiries from any individuals, the group collectively, or representatives of the same. Notwithstanding this, however, as part of our ongoing community engagement, we have had some dialogue on the topic with various stakeholders.”

Does Frontier Energy recognise that the chairman of the Kyarumba city council made an inquiry about the matter in the summer of 2021?

  • “In May 2023, in connection with the informal inquiry in the case, we found that there had been an inquiry to an employee of the project company back in 2021, which for unknown reasons has not been processed in accordance with our guidelines and has not been forwarded to the management of the project company or our management company. We will try to map out why and see if we need to adjust our procedure to minimise the risk of this happening again.”
  • “We can only regret that the matter was not brought forward at the time.”

What has Frontier Energy done to address the issue and mitigate its consequences?

  • “As mentioned, our employees initially asked for specific information to be submitted so that we could assess the matter. Since this has not happened, we have tried and will continue to try to gather information through dialogue with the group and stakeholders in the local area.”

Is this the first time you’ve experienced this type of issue with one of your projects?

  • “There are many challenges associated with generating renewable energy in Africa. However, we have not previously had enquiries about similar issues in other projects.”
  • “That said, unwanted pregnancies at a young age and HIV infection in general is a major issue in many of the areas we work in. In the Kasese district, where the Nyamagasani project is located, approximately 30% of teenage girls become pregnant and a similar proportion never attend school (National Population Council). At Frontier Energy, we have for a long time focused on this issue, as well as on women’s rights more generally, when implementing our projects, as women are a highly vulnerable and oppressed group in the areas we work in.”
  • “We focus on this in relation to recruitment and employment conditions, but just as much in relation to the local population. In our projects, in addition to the project work itself, we always try to make a positive difference by working with the local community to improve their living conditions. This has led to the construction of dormitories for girls in local schools (so they don’t have to walk to and from school every day, a commute that in many places leads to unwanted teenage pregnancies), support for improved teaching in schools, training of birth assistants, support for female micro-entrepreneurs, better access to drinking water, etc. which are all part of the Community Development Action Plans that we always develop with the local population and use project funds to implement.”

One of the women we interviewed encourages Frontier Energy to offer work (or education) to the affected mothers so they can earn some money and better support themselves and their children. Is this something you would consider?

  • “As stated above, we unfortunately cannot comment on the specific case out of consideration for those who have contacted us. However, as mentioned, we are working on what we can do for the local population around our projects, including members of the local population who contact us through our complaint mechanism, and particularly vulnerable groups.”

Known risk

According to several human rights and business experts interviewed by Danwatch, the case of the 31 girls and women in Kyarumba is symptomatic of large infrastructure projects in Africa.

It is well known that large influxes of foreign – typically male – labour into small communities can lead to sexual violations, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, explains Andrea Shemberg, an American-Italian human rights lawyer.

“Because these are sensitive issues – in some cultures more than others – they are not always brought to light and addressed. But all companies undertaking large infrastructure projects like this need to be aware of the risk of these types of human rights abuses. It has to be top of mind ,” says Andrea Shemberg.

According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Frontier Energy cannot excuse itself on the grounds that the men were employed by the subcontractor VS Hydro – and not Frontier Energy itself.

“All companies have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout their value chain. This means that they are also responsible for the behaviour of their subcontractors,” says Andrea Shemberg.

Elin Wrzoncki, Head of Human Rights and Business at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, confirms that companies must take responsibility for the type of problems described by the sources in Kyarumba:

“Social issues, including impacts on the sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls, related to the influx of migrant labour are certainly within the scope of a company’s responsibility,” she says.

In their email response to Danwatch, Frontier Energy acknowledges that as the majority shareholder of the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project, they have a responsibility to the local population in Kyarumba.

The company also explains that they took a number of measures during the construction of the hydropower plants to prevent what the 31 single mothers have been subjected to.

Investment Director Anders Hauch writes in an email that Frontier Energy organised awareness campaigns about HIV and AIDS and the use of contraception for both the local community and employees of the companies that were responsible for the construction. The company also ensured that their contractors provided free condoms for their employees.

“However, it should be noted that our work with awareness campaigns and community dialogue was hampered by the very restrictive COVID-19 measures in Uganda for most of 2020 and 2021,” he writes.

Jessica Kabuhgo encourages Frontier Energy to offer jobs to the single mothers. Photo: Joel Kaguta / NTV Uganda

Appeal to Frontier Energy

The two hydropower plants that make up the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project are currently in operation and supply power to the national grid in Uganda.

Jessica Kabuhgo hopes that Frontier Energy will help her get a job. She was 19 when she was impregnated by an employee at the Nyamagasani Hydro Power Project.

“He had a lot of money and would give me between 20 and 50,000 shillings. But after I got pregnant, I could no longer get in touch with him. He has left town and his phone number no longer works,” she says.

Today, she lives at home with her parents, who help her take care of her daughter.

“My message to the company is that they make sure that we women get a job or some education so that we have a chance to create our own lives,” she says.

Frontier Energy did not wish to comment on Jessica Kabuhgo’s proposal. The company reiterates that they “cannot comment on the specific case out of consideration for those who have contacted them”.

Meanwhile, city council chairman Ivan Bwambale is trying to help the single mothers and their families in the best possible way. Through the local bishop, he has recently donated a herd of piglets.

“We need help to keep the mothers out of trouble now that there are no fathers to take care of them,” he says.

Frontier Energy’s subcontractor VS Hydro has not responded to Danwatch’s inquiries

We emit 25 per cent less CO2 per kilo of pork than we did in 2005.

The feat was repeated to the hilt when Danish Crown launched a campaign in 2020 with the slogan “Danish pork is more climate-friendly than you think.”

The 25 per cent was promoted in TV and radio commercials, in newspaper ads, on street signs and on the packaging of the pork itself. A small footnote on the website stated that the figure came from a report from Aarhus University.

See how Danish Crown uses the 25 per cent in a promotional video. Video: Danish Crown on Facebook

But now Danwatch and the Danish newspaper Politiken have revealed that Danish Crown, which commissioned and co-financed the report, has controlled the work of researchers at Aarhus University to a degree that, according to experts, violates the research principles of arm’s length and impartiality.

The revelation comes just weeks before Danish Crown is set to defend its campaign in the Western High Court, as the food giant has been sued for misleading marketing. The case is Denmark’s first greenwashing trial and is therefore considered to be a case of principle.

Apparently, Danish Crown is sitting at the table and decides how research should be conducted.
Heine Andersen
Professor of sociology and expert in freedom of research

The experts’ opinions are based on emails and other documents sent between Aarhus University and Danish Crown, which Danwatch and Politiken have been given access to.

Heine Andersen, Professor of Sociology and expert in freedom of research, calls the report on which Danish Crown based its campaign “unreliable”.

“Researchers from Aarhus University should be in charge of the research. After all, they are the researchers. They have clearly not done that with this report. Here it is obviously Danish Crown that sits at the table, has provided data and calculations and decides how the results should be formulated,” says Heine Andersen, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen.

Research ethics expert Claus Emmeche finds the material worrying.

“It should not be a case where a private actor or a lobby organisation has written a conclusion in advance and then uses university researchers to rubber-stamp it. You suspect this when you read the parties’ correspondence,” says Claus Emmeche, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Copenhagen.

Read emails from Danish Crown yourself

Two selected responses from Danish Crown to Aarhus University.

Click to enlarge emails

The usual suspects

From the very beginning, it was clear what Danish Crown wanted to get out of the collaboration with Aarhus University.

The correspondence about the report started in 2018, when Charlotte Thy, then environmental manager at Danish Crown, wrote an email to John Hermansen, a researcher in agriculture and the environment at Aarhus University.

He is also part of a research group that has previously been criticised for not being at arm’s length from the meat industry. We’ll come back to that.

Charlotte Thy writes that Danish Crown would like to have a life cycle assessment – or an LCA as it is called – of Danish pork. It is a method for calculating the carbon footprint of products. John Hermansen and his research group would like to do that, he replies.

Charlotte Thy suggests a meeting and points out what the report should be able to document:

“An outcome from the LCA should be a review of the results, as you did with the 13 types of beef, so that there is a basis for pointing out the advantages of pork on a documented basis.”

In the summer of 2019, Information began its coverage of the so-called “beef report”, which was more or less made by the same team of researchers at Aarhus University as the report investigated by Danwatch and Politiken.

Information revealed that the beef report was made in such close collaboration between the researchers and Danish Crown that Aarhus University ended up withdrawing it. In the aftermath, the then head of department resigned from his position. According to several experts, the report underestimated the climate impact of beef.

Due to the fierce criticism, Danish Crown commissioned the Danish Attorney General’s Office to investigate the company’s collaboration with research institutions. The Attorney General concluded that Danish Crown must have been a co-author of a number of reports from the Department of Agroecology at Aarhus University.

She refers to a previous report from 2015 by John Hermansen’s research group on the climate impact of different types of beef. It was the precursor to the “beef report”, also by Aarhus University, which was at the centre of one of the biggest research scandals of recent times. In 2021, the Attorney General’s Office concluded that Danish Crown must have co-authored both reports on beef due to the company’s involvement in the research itself.

“Here is finally our proposal for the calculations regarding the environmental profile of pork,” John Hermansen writes a few months after Danish Crown’s inquiry, and encloses a project description.
“As agreed, you just need to get started,” she replies. They agree on a price of DKK 30-40,000, but an actual contract is never drawn up.

Warning lights are flashing

Already in this initial phase, warning lights are clearly flashing, Heine Andersen points out. Firstly, it sounds as if the conclusion is written in advance when Charlotte Thy orders a LCA to document “the benefits of pork”, he says.

In addition, he points out that researchers should not send “proposals for calculations”, as they are the ones who should decide how the calculations should be designed. Last but not least, you should always ensure arm’s length in a contract.

“The fact that there is no contract that defines who is responsible for what and ensures independence and arm’s length disqualifies the report in advance,” says Heine Andersen.

However, it is in the period that follows that the whole thing becomes a case of pure confession, he adds.

It is absolutely ludicrous that the external party, with billions of Danish kroner at stake, can be allowed to go through the draft sentence by sentence and comment on every possible detail on almost every page.
Heine Andersen
Professor of sociology and expert in freedom of research

The period otherwise starts with a good atmosphere between the parties. Danish Crown is excited about where the researchers’ work is heading. “It’s a fantastic development where you show great reductions,” Charlotte Thy praises.

However, after some corrections, the reductions will be slightly smaller, senior researcher Troels Kristensen from the research group explains. “This has meant some changes in both level and difference between the two years, but still with a significant reduction.”

“The difference is expected to be even greater when we also include the slaughterhouse part,” he adds.

“It’s still great, even if the number has shifted a bit,” Charlotte Thy replies.

The purpose is marketing, the target group is salespeople

However, the tone changes in November 2018, when Charlotte Thy reads what the researchers describe as “the final report”.

She thanks for the report, but notes: “There are a few things we need to get right before we are completely done.”

She then reminds them of the agreement with the project.

“Overall, we wanted to carry out this comparative life cycle assessment to be able to use it in marketing. The inspiration for this was taken from the beef project from 2015,” she writes, adding:

“The target group for the memorandum is thus communication professionals, salespeople and others who do not have a strong scientific background.”

She points out that she wants a meeting and that she has written a number of comments directly into the report, which she has attached.

In the document, Charlotte Thy has added 51 comments to different parts of the 28-page report. Most of the comments indicate that things should be changed. Figures and tables need to look different and parts of the text need to be changed.

For example, “Svin” (pig) should be changed to “gris” (pork) in the title – a change in wording that the Danish Agriculture & Food Council is also actively working to promote to improve the image of pork. She also prefers the term “miljøpåvirkning” (environmental impact) to “miljøbelastning” (environmental stress), she adds.

On the other hand, there are sections containing what she calls “environmental selling points”, which she would like to see more of: “Here we have some of the most important arguments that we need to use in marketing and further communication with our customers and other stakeholders. These scenarios and not least the choice of them should have a separate section and more information should be attached to them,” she writes.

She also writes in a comment that the environmental footprint of soy feed should not be included. It should be stated separately, she dictates. The lack of this item in the accounts was one of the experts’ points of criticism in the coverage of the beef report, as it represents a large part of the climate impact of food.

“If you don’t include it, you miss the most important aspect. Of course, you should include it to the best of your ability,” said Henrik Wenzel, professor at SDU and expert in life cycle analyses, on that occasion.

Documentation

Examples of direct comments in the report

Danish Crown added 51 comments on parts of the report after it was sent to the company by the researchers from Aarhus University. Here are some examples:

Source: Access to documents

Completely grotesque

Heine Andersen strongly opposes the way Danish Crown is allowed into the control room.

“It is absolutely grotesque that the external party, who has billions of Danish kroner at stake, can be allowed to go through the draft sentence by sentence and comment on every possible detail on almost every page. It is completely unacceptable.”

The process is a breach of the arm’s length principle and thus the guidelines for good research practice, according to Professor of Law at SDU and expert in freedom of research, Sten Schaumburg-Müller.

“Of course, there may be some things that the requester (the person ordering the research, ed.) has an opinion about that is so minor that it doesn’t affect the arm’s length. But when it comes to the methodology or calculations themselves, the line has been crossed. And my assessment is that in this case, we are over the line.

This is backed up by Claus Emmeche.

“It is a breach of the arm’s length principle when researchers’ freedom to choose methods, calculation models and so on is not respected. And that seems to be the case here.”

Danish Crown begins communicating on the report’s findings in spring 2019 when the company publishes its climate targets. “Danish Crown has had researchers calculating and documenting the development since 2005. Therefore, it is now clear that the climate impact of producing one kilogram of pork has been reduced by 25 per cent,” the company writes, without mentioning that Aarhus University made the report.

In the fall, when Information’s uncovering of the beef report was in full swing, Danish Crown writes to the researchers that they would like to use the report despite what Information wrote. However, the parties may need to be more clear about their collaboration, Charlotte Thy notes:

“It has been decided to maintain that we will present the results from the comparative LCA you did for us. This means that we must also be able to present the memorandum.”

“In light of the pending beef case, the memorandum may need to be updated with a preface and a declaration to clarify what has been going on.”

The researchers therefore add the following about the collaboration:

“Danish Crown has provided editorial and comprehension comments, including the use of the term “grisekød” (pork) instead of “svinekød” (pig meat)”. Method selection, data processing and the final version of the report were made by employees at the Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University.”

However, this is not an adequate description, says Claus Emmeche.

“It sounds like a camouflage of what has actually happened. They could have written that Danish Crown has also been involved in interpreting data and results.”

Sten Schaumburg-Müller agrees.

“This is not a very precise way of describing what has happened. It should be mentioned that Danish Crown has been involved in both obtaining and assessing data.”

Danish Crown does not wish to be interviewed. The reason for this is that Charlotte Thy and her former managers no longer work at the company, press manager Jens Hansen writes.

However, Danish Crown acknowledges that the company has interfered too much in the creation of the pork report. Nevertheless, the conclusions of the report stand, Jens Hansen writes.

“We are fully aware that the process behind the creation of the concept paper and the written presentation of the project was criticisable. The important thing for us, however, is that the validity of the analyses, calculations and results in the report has not been questioned.”

Jørgen Eivind Olesen, Head of Institute, agrees to this.

Do you stand behind this report today?

“We are not behind the process, it is done in a different way today. In 2019, we did not have a quality management system, which the process around this report reflects,” says the head of department.

Not enough arm length?

“When the quality management system was introduced at the end of 2019, after this report was submitted, we changed the processes to better ensure arm’s length and to better declare the necessary communication and exchange of data between a researcher and a company. It has nothing to do with the research results. We stand fully behind them.”

Politiken and Danwatch have been in contact with Charlotte Thy, who no longer works at Danish Crown. She does not wish to comment.

Spy ships, nuclear submarines, landing ships and frigates. Danish Rockwool has systematically and deliberately supplied the Russian navy with hundreds of thousands of square meters of ship insulation used in some of the most advanced vessels in the Russian navy.

This is revealed by a comprehensive review of Russia’s official tender database, which Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have conducted over several months.

In total, there is evidence that since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Rockwool ship insulation has been sold at least 52 times to a total of 31 different vessels in Putin’s fleet. These include two destroyers, two submarines that can be equipped with nuclear weapons, two landing ships, three frigates, six minesweepers and five reconnaissance vessels – in other words, warships and spy ships at the very heavy end of the Russian naval arsenal.

Together, the list represents a sizable portion of Russia’s active fleet, which in July 2023 is estimated to consist of 297 warships, submarines and other military vessels.

In 29 of the cases, sales were made through Rockwool’s official partner and distributor, Marine Complex Systems LLC (MKS), a company that specialises in servicing the Russian military.

To better understand the type of vessels Rockwool has supplied insulation to, we asked Commander and Military Analyst at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, to comment on their role in the Russian navy:

Destroyer, project 11551
“Admiral Chabanenko” (650) of the Northern Fleet

Destroyer, project 1155
“Marshall Shaposhnikov” (543) of the Pacific Fleet

Both are older destroyers, but still in active service. Also seen in the Baltic Sea. Used primarily as an anti-submarine vessel and is specially designed for this purpose.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

Several of the ships have since played a role in the current war in Ukraine. This applies to the six ships belonging to the Black Sea Fleet, but for example, the landing ship “Pyotr Morgunov” from the Northern Fleet, to which MKS supplied Rockwool products worth 48 million rubles (approx. DKK 4.5 million at the time) in 2018, has also been directly involved in the war.

An EU regulation from March 2022 states that the 135-metre-long ship is equipped with an AK-630 cannon and heavy machine gun, among other things:

“The large landing ship “Pyotr Morgunov” project 11711, built by United Shipbuilding Corporation, participated in the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”

Ukrainian military analyst Alexander Kovalenko also confirms to Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet that “Pyotr Morgunov” has played an important role during the war:

“It has been in the Black Sea since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. ‘Pyotr Morgunov’ has provided transportation of ammunition, personnel and equipment and has also participated in the mining of the Black Sea,” he says.

Landing ship, project 11711
“Ivan Gren” (010) of the Northern Fleet
“Pyotr Morgunov” (017) of the Northern Fleet

Capable Russian landing craft, the latest addition to the fleet. Kind of a hybrid between an amphibious and landing craft and an actual warship. Also seen in the Baltic Sea.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

Denies customer relationship with Russia’s military

The market for selling insulation to warships is something of which the renowned Danish company has been fully aware. In an official promotional booklet from 2015, which Rockwool translated and distributed in Russia, highlights warships as one of the most common applications for Rockwool’s marine insulation.

Rockwool’s Head of Communications, Michael Zarin, writes in a response to Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet that they are aware that insulation products in “certain cases have been used in Russian naval vessels” and that they have been sold through the Russian subsidiaries’ external distributors.

“Neither ROCKWOOL A/S nor our Russian subsidiaries sell directly to Russian end users and nor do they have a customer relationship with the Russian military,” Michael Zarin writes, among other things.

Rockwool does not want to comment on why the company in Russia continues to work with MKS, which as a company is specialised in servicing the Russian navy. Neither do they want to answer questions about whether the group makes special demands on their distributors in Russia in relation to the end use of their products.

“ROCKWOOL A/S is aware that general insulation products – as well as insulation products for use in civil marine applications sold through the Russian Subsidiaries’ external distributors – have in some cases been used in Russian naval vessels similar to how these products are used on all types of ships worldwide – including commercial and industrial vessels, as well as cruise ships and yachts. ROCKWOOL products can neither be weaponised nor used for military purposes in general. No stone wool products are classified as dual-use.

All in all, these are harmless products whose main use is to insulate houses and buildings to improve energy efficiency. Neither ROCKWOOL A/S nor our Russian subsidiaries sell directly to Russian end users or have a customer relationship with the Russian military. For the record, as we’ve previously stated, production of marine insulation products in Russia will cease in March 2022.

At ROCKWOOL, we don’t usually comment on the details you ask about that relate to specific project or customer relationships – even those that happened almost 10 years ago. But as we’ve said before, ROCKWOOL has extensive guidelines when it comes to risk assessments and due diligence. ROCKWOOL has complied with all Russia-related sanctions, which the Danish Business Authority has also concluded.”

 

Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, project 955A
“K-549 Prince Vladimir” (825) of the Northern Fleet

Largest, most dangerous and newest nuclear-powered submarine capable of carrying the latest “Baluva” ballistic missiles.

Dangerous in the North Atlantic if it escapes through the GIUK gap (the waters between Greenland, Iceland and the UK) undetected. Can launch its missiles from all areas of the globe and hit all Western targets.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

Can pose a military threat

According to Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a naval captain and military analyst at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen, the number of Russian naval ships with Rockwool is collectively capable of posing “a threat to allied forces at sea, on land and in the air.”

“The collection of ships is assessed to pose a military threat to allied naval vessels, including in relation to special operations, retrieval missions, monitoring, mapping of critical infrastructure and finally in crisis and war situations,” he says.

He particularly highlights the large ships such as the battlecruiser “Admiral Nakhimov” and the two destroyers “Marshal Shaposhnikov” and “Admiral Chabanenko”, all of which, despite being many years old, can still play a major role in future missions.

“Especially the larger units, regardless of age or whether they have undergone midlife updates, as well as the latest nuclear units, pose a particular threat in the Atlantic and to NATO allies,” says Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen.

Special-purpose nuclear-powered submarine, project 09852
“Belgorod” (BS-329) of GUGI, Northern Fleet

This unit forms the backbone of the Russians’ ability to conduct deep-sea operations (3000 – 6000 metres) with GUGI and specially equipped submarines. Its size indicates that it is best suited for special operations in the Atlantic and Pacific, but it cannot be ruled out that it has also been in the Baltic Sea.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

Professor Michael Petersen, head of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the US Naval War College and a former member of both US military intelligence and the National Security Council, also believes that the many concrete warships are of great importance to Russia’s military.

He emphasises that Russia’s navy has undergone a large-scale modernisation in the years before and after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and according to him, Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet’s list of naval vessels insulated with Rockwool reflects exactly that development.

“The complete list provides an interesting and concrete insight into the Russian navy’s priorities for the construction and modernisation of surface ships. They reflect an emphasis on power projection, intelligence gathering and coastal defense,” he says.

“In particular, the construction of Project 22350 Gorshkov-class missile frigates is the primary focus in restoring the Russian surface fleet’s global presence and military power. They have carried out Russia’s highest-profile peacetime naval missions, including the first circumnavigation of the globe by a Russian warship since the nineteenth century in 2019.”

Frigate, project 22350
“Admiral Gorshkov” (417) of the Northern Fleet
“Admiral Kasatonov” (461) of the Northern Fleet
“Admiral Golovko” (456) of the Northern Fleet

Latest new line of frigates for the Russian navy. Extremely powerful unit designed for air defense, but also for launching various types of cruise missiles.

Heavily inspired by Western frigate design as a multirole frigate for use in all domains such as surface, air and anti-submarine warfare.

Whether it is equally good for all roles is questionable, but the air defense role seems strongest with its long range strike capability with cruise missiles as well as the latest hypersonic Tsirkon missiles.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

Systematic practices

Back in February this year, the Danish Business Authority initiated an investigation when Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet first revealed Rockwool’s connections to the Russian military.

At the time, it specifically concerned 5 ships equipped with Rockwool insulation, and the Danish Business Authority did not believe there was reason to assume that Rockwool had violated the EU sanctions introduced in connection with the annexation of Crimea.

Tara Van Ho, one of the world’s leading experts on human rights and business at Essex Law School in the UK, emphasises that even if companies are found not to have breached sanctions, they are still obliged to comply with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which are designed to ensure that companies do not contribute to human rights abuses at any stage of their value chain.

“Rockwool has been behind a kind of systematic practice that is really worrying from a UNGP perspective. It suggests that there is a bigger problem with Rockwool’s screening processes,” she says.

Attack submarine, project 677
“Velikie Luki” (B-587) of the Northern Fleet

A dangerous little guy that is considered suitable for coastal operations.

The successor to the Kilo-class submarines, it is the latest diesel-electric type of submarine to be launched by the Russians. It can operate air-independently for up to 45 days, making it a particularly dangerous threat in the Baltic Sea, should it operate there.

Equipped with the latest versions of Kalibr cruise missiles, which we have seen used in the war in Ukraine.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

“Many or all of these sales may be technically compliant with EU sanctions, but Rockwool was still supplying the Russian military through their official distributors with products necessary for the military’s activities.”

“As soon as Russia invaded Crimea, those sales should have been investigated more thoroughly – what we call enhanced human rights due diligence. That Rockwool continued to allow these sales raises the question of what they have done, and what they are doing now, to ensure that they are not complicit in Russia’s war crimes or crimes against humanity,” says Tara van Ho.

Have a responsibility

Fernanda Hopenhaym Cabrera, a member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, which helps implement and advise on the UNGPs, also emphasises that Rockwool is obliged to investigate its sales in Russia.

“Any company that supplies the arms sector with products or operates in areas of armed conflict should conduct enhanced due diligence”.

Frigate, project 11540
“Neustrashimy” (772) of the Baltic Fleet

An old lady in the arsenal. Once considered one of the biggest threats to submarines in the Baltic Sea. Today, it poses no major threat to modern submarines.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

“Rockwool now has a responsibility to prevent, mitigate and address the potential or actual human rights violations caused by their business or commercial relationships,” says Fernanda Hopenhaym Cabrera and continues:

“This means that Rockwool has a responsibility to decide whether to implement direct preventive measures, withdraw from the region, abandon commercial relationships, or use its influence in the supply chain to prevent and address adverse human rights impacts, based on the results of its extended due diligence, of course.

Battlecruiser, project 11442M
“Admiral Nakhimov” (080) of the Northern Fleet

The old Kirov-class in a new disguise. Will be equipped with the latest types of modern missiles, including the Tsirkon, which is a hypersonic missile, allowing it to pose a threat to even larger carrier groups in a Western context.

However, its age, despite the midlife update, means that as a unit it is not considered to be the most advanced but still the largest nuclear-powered surface unit the Russian navy has to offer. A presence in the North Atlantic will, nonetheless, mean that resources will need to be allocated to keep an eye on it in the event of a serious conflict.
Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen
Commander and Military Analyst, Centre for Military Studies, University of Copenhagen

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have asked Rockwool whether conditions have been imposed on the company’s Russian distributors – and whether the company itself believes that sales to the Russian military comply with the UNGP guidelines.

Michael Zarin, Head of Communications at Rockwool, declines to answer this question, but writes in an email:

“(…) As we have also previously stated, ROCKWOOL has extensive guidelines when it comes to risk assessments and due diligence.”

Despite repeated requests, Rockwool has not been willing to disclose the results of the risk assessments that the company has allegedly carried out in connection with their business in Russia.

One day, just before New Year, a ship registered under the Panamanian flag sailed up the Limfjord. The ship was carrying 77,447 tonnes of coal to keep the people of Northern Jutland warm through the winter.

The coal also held an important story about one of this year’s most powerful and controversial companies, a much-debated mine and a large group of people in Colombia who believe the coal is tainted by their blood.

In the spring of 2022, the coal was hastily ordered by Aalborg Forsyning. At the time, the Northern Jutlanders received all their coal from Russia, but the EU had banned such imports in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As a result, Colombian coal, among other things, suddenly became popular again around the world after years of declining demand.

Tonnes of coal are exported

  • Coal has been in the spotlight in recent years due to the green transition and increased focus on using more sustainable energy sources. In Denmark, it was also decided that several power plants would phase out the use of coal. However, the war in Russia and a demand to ensure energy security has once again made the coal-black energy in demand in Denmark and the rest of Europe.
  • This also applies to Colombian coal. According to figures from the National Federation of Coal Producers (Fenalcarbon), Colombia exported 13.2 million tonnes of coal out of the country in the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 10.6 per cent compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, export data shows that in 2022, Europe was the largest buyer of Colombian coal, followed by the Middle East.

Last year, Aalborg Forsyning received a total of 125,000 tonnes from Colombia, 30,000 tonnes from the USA and 240,000 tonnes from South Africa to keep the people of Northern Jutland warm when winter returned.

One day in early December, the 77,447 tonnes of coal were shipped out of Puerto Bolivar on the La Guajira peninsula in northern Colombia. The small village was once populated by fishermen and farmers living off the lush nature, now everything is covered in coal dust and people have left.

Every day, trains arrive with 120 wagons loaded with coal from the famous Cerrejón mine 150 kilometres inland. Tens of thousands of tonnes of coal are unloaded into large bunkers at the port, from where it is loaded onto ships that sail to destinations all over the world, including Aalborg.

A few people have remained in the city. Among them is 52-year-old José Tomas Freile Gonzales, who Danwatch met in his home, where the furniture is covered in dust. He feels surrounded by the Cerrejón mine and its owner, multinational commodities trader Glencore, known for corruption and environmental destruction around the world:

“We are just watching the coal pass by here on the train. The coal, the dust pollutes us, kills us and dries us out,” says José Tomas Freile Gonzales.

He’s far from alone in those feelings.

In March this year, Danwatch went on a 10-day reporting trip to the area around the Cerrejón mine. And from here, the message is very clear: despite repeated promises from the mine’s owner, Glencore, and demands from customers and investors, nothing has changed.

The mine is still rumbling on and still making people sick, opponents are persecuted and the mine is an environmental disaster for the entire local area.

The Vampire Squid

Few companies have a wilder and more scandalous history than Glencore. At the same time, hardly any company is more centrally positioned in this year’s energy crisis.

Glencore trades and produces everything from wheat to green minerals to coal. Some describe Glencore as a “vampire squid”, a squid that has wrapped itself around our entire civilization, ready to pounce on anything that smells like a good deal. The company’s tentacles extend far into our lives, and whether it’s your electric car, your smartphone or the heat in your radiator, there’s a good chance that Glencore made a profit from it before it got to you.

In 2022, Glencore entered into several large settlements, which in total meant that the company had to pay more than 11 billion Danish kroner for committing corruption and money laundering over many years. Nevertheless, 2022 was a record year for Glencore with earnings in excess of 230 billion kroner.

This can also be seen in the wealth of Glencore’s largest shareholder, 66-year-old South African Ivan Glasenberg, who has been involved in the company since 1984. According to Forbes’ 2023 report, he is worth 61.75 billion kroner.

As the world’s largest coal trader, Glencore and Glasenberg have benefited from the energy crisis, and as one of the largest suppliers of critical minerals, they are capitalising on the green transition. According to observers, Glencore has achieved this pivotal position in the global economy by being cynical and unafraid to cross the line.

A scandalous story

Glencore was founded in 1974 by Belgian-born commodities trader Marc Rich, then known as Marc Rich + Co. AG. In the early years, the company made its money by trading oil with countries and people others wouldn’t trade: South Africa’s apartheid regime, Chile’s dictator Augusto Pinochet and a sanctions-hit Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis.

The company quickly became adept at tax evasion, sanctions avoidance and bribery. And by being in places where no one else would be – from DR Congo to Colombia – Glencore has gained access to resources and grown bigger than anyone else in their field.

For the first 37 years of its existence, Glencore enjoyed peace and quiet that comes with being headquartered in the Swiss town of Baar, where discretion is a virtue. For a long time, they were even nicknamed ‘the biggest company you’ve never heard of’. But when the company went public in 2011, they had to open up to their investors. Stories emerged that Glencore had traded with corrupt regimes; speculated on the price of grain while people in developing countries rioted for lack of food; and caused major environmental problems in African countries, such as acid rain in Zambia.

Since then, the scandals have abounded. Last year, when the Danish pension fund AkademikerPension had to explain why it would no longer invest in Glencore, it cited “allegations of corruption, poor working conditions, discrimination, child labour, forced displacement of local populations, excessive use of force, tax evasion and environmental pollution.”

So far, the scandals have culminated in the bribery cases that they settled last year.

Over a 10-year period, Glencore employees bribed the most powerful people in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela and DR Congo. Glencore flew money in suitcases to bribe judges and dictators. They have bribed their way to lucrative contracts and to the disappearance of lawsuits. As a US attorney general said last summer, the scale of bribery is “staggering”.

In one of the cases, investigators reviewed more than a million documents and found, among other things, that a commodities trader from Glencore’s West Africa division had withdrawn almost 50 million Danish kroner from Glencore’s cash desk at its headquarters in Switzerland and used it for bribery 25 times between 2012 and 2015. One of the directors who authorised the withdrawal of the money was responsible for business ethics.

No sooner had South Sudan gained independence in 2011 than Glencore was sending people on a private jet with 5.5 million kroner in bribes. Within days of the money landing in the right hands, Glencore’s fortune was made and they won a number of valuable contracts.

And so the list goes on.

Glencore’s Colombian mining adventure

In 2000, Glencore bought into the Cerrejón mine along with the two mining giants BHP and AngloAmerican, and in 2002 they took full control. The mining companies immediately began expanding the mine, encroaching further and further into the lands of the indigenous Wayuu people and Afro-Colombians, descendants of West African slaves who had come to the area in the 16th century.

The expansion was done in a way that the local population saw as destructive. Entire communities were forcibly relocated. Rivers that provided essential drinking water were diverted. And the people who didn’t move were contaminated with toxic heavy metals and coal dust from the mine. It’s still like that, the locals say.

In 2021, BHP and AngloAmerican sold their stake in the mine because, with climate change and the Paris Agreement in mind, they could not reconcile their businesses with being part of the mine. Glencore bought it all, became the sole owner of Cerrejón and promised to be a “responsible administrator”. Yet among workers in the mine and the communities surrounding the mine, Glencore is far from being perceived as responsible.

Today, the mine is the largest of its kind in Latin America and one of the largest in the world, with almost 70,000 hectares and 5,000 employees. That’s the equivalent of almost 100,000 dry, dusty football fields, filled with machines and trucks that emit a constant noise to the surrounding world. An area that has slowly eaten into its surroundings, turning it into a place where life doesn’t stand a chance. Everything takes place behind large fences; the mine is off-limits to outsiders.

The local impact

One of those who has experienced the mine from the inside is Jelix Enrique Torres Bolivar, who we meet in the mining town of Fonseca, under a tree in the courtyard of the Sintracarbón coal miners’ union. For two decades, he breathed in the dust of the coal mine.

“If I had known what mining was, I would never have worked in a mine,” he says through the face mask that covers his nose and mouth:

“It is harmful to health, to the respiratory system, to the skin, to the musculoskeletal system. Today I am a patient, I suffer from everything.”

Jelix Enrique Torres Bolivar is the first Cerrejón mine worker to have it recognised that the dust in the mine destroyed his lungs and gave him silicosis, also known as black lung.

Jelix Enrique Torres Bolivar knew nothing about mining when he got a job at the Cerrejón mine in the early 1980s, aged 20. Photo: Ivan Castaño / El Turbión

However, he is just one of many miners whose health has been destroyed in the mine, says José Brito, who has been health secretary of the Sintracarbón union for 15 years and has been a member of the National Council for Occupational Risks.

“I know that people are working with a very dangerous material in Cerrejón. With the help of the union, we managed to discover more than 1,500 examples of workers who have fallen ill from working in Cerrejón, some of them with carcinogenic diseases. People suffer a lot from gastritis, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia problems and psychological problems,” says the former union leader.

The deserted community

Near the small village of El Rocio, the Cerrejón mine is also intruding. The town is located on the banks of Bruno River, which Glencore and the Cerrejón mine want to divert because there are large coal reserves underneath.

If that happens, it would be catastrophic for the indigenous Wayuu people who live in El Rocio and other villages along the river.

According to a 2017 court ruling, at least 30 Wayuu villages depend on water from the Bruno watercourse. And the diversion now planned by Cerrejón will directly affect the water supply for a population of more than 200,000 people. At the same time, it threatens key parts of the Wayuu people’s culture, where water is connected to their spirits and spirituality.

However, Glencore is far from accepting the decision of the Constitutional Court and the protection of Bruno. Glencore has sued the Colombian state over the decision not to allow coal mining under the Bruno, claiming that the court’s decision was discriminatory, unfair and arbitrary and denied them “fair and equitable treatment”.

And the Bruno is just the latest example. Over the years, Cerrejón has diverted at least 17 rivers to extract coal. But the Wayuu people have also succeeded in preventing diversions. 57-year-old Leobardo Sierra, who we met in El Rocio, hopes to succeed again.

“On the one hand, I feel calm because I’ve been fighting. But it’s exhausting. I also see that there is hope, that dreams can come true. We also don’t want them to continue destroying or killing streams or depriving people of their territory.”

Danwatch and El Turbión, the Colombian media outlet we have been working with, tried to get a comment from Glencore through the press department at its headquarters in Switzerland. However, the press department never returned.

Glencore’s Chairman of the Board Kalidas Madhavpeddi could not hide from the criticism during Glencore’s annual general meeting on 26 May in Zug, Switzerland, where El Turbión was present.

Glencore’s recent annual general meeting had an unexpected visitor. Photo: Anonymous

Here, Kalidas Madhavpeddi started by praising Glencore’s CRS policies:

“Wherever we operate, we are committed to placing a high value on doing so in an ethical and sustainable way. We employ 10,000s of people, support local businesses and service providers, and invest in local education, healthcare and infrastructure.”

Kalidas Madhavpeddi probably didn’t expect that the NGO Yukpa Solidarity Network had flown in a local indigenous woman who had experienced Glencore’s fatal devastation of the population in the Becerril and La Jagua de Ibirico regions of Colombia.

Just over an hour into the general meeting, she took the floor:

“I am a Yukpa woman from an indigenous reserve where Glencore has established itself, and I have seen the transformation and pollution of the environment that is causing the deaths of children. More than 40 children have died in our territory caused by pollution from open pit mining,” she says.

Kalidas Madhavpeddi then answered briefly:

“From our perspective, we do everything we can in terms of operations in our facilities. I’m not aware of that development.”

Danwatch and El Turbión have also posed a number of questions to Glencore through the local administration directly at the Cerrejón mine in Colombia.

In an email response, the mine’s ESG manager, Inés Elvira Andrade, primarily refers to Glencore’s website for answers to questions related to the company’s past corruption cases.

In response to the allegations of air pollution, sick employees, threats against critics and the diversion of watercourses, Inés Elvira Andrade denies that Glencore in Cerrejón has failed to live up to its responsibilities.

“Cerrejón’s commitments in La Guajira extend far beyond the investment, the payment of taxes and the creation of quality jobs. We strive to apply the highest standards of ethics and respect in our relationships with all our stakeholders. Similarly, we are committed to developing our operations in an environmentally responsible way and leaving a natural legacy for future generations,” she explains.

“We act on the principle of continuous improvement to strengthen our human rights due diligence processes. For this reason, we comply with various international standards and our human rights policy is in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

Read the full answer at the bottom of the article or click here to go straight the answer.

A case that repeats itself

Danwatch first visited the Cerrejón mine in the autumn of 2009, when a quarter of the Danish coal consumption came from the mine.

Many of the problems were the same then as they are now. Forced relocations, pollution and sick coal workers. The stories in 2010 caused most Danish power plants to stop buying coal from Cerrejón.

Over the following 13 years, there have been several critical stories about the conditions in Cerrejón in both Danish and international media. Despite this and Glencore’s controversial reputation, Aalborg Forsyning chose to buy coal from Cerrejón in the spring of 2022.

When Danwatch spoke for the first time last summer with Per Clausen (EL), chairman of the board of Aalborg Forsyning and Nordjyllandsværket, about the conditions in and around Cerrejón, he reacted with surprise and a guarantee to initiate a dialogue with Glencore.

Danwatch has now confronted Per Clausen with the fact that conditions in Cerrejón are still horrible. In a written response, the chairman of the board maintains that Nordjyllandsværket has not entered into any new contracts with Glencore since the 77,447 tonnes of coal that arrived in December.

In addition, Per Clausen explains that they are in an ongoing dialogue with Glencore and have, among other things, presented the articles that Danwatch wrote last year about the mine’s negative impact on the local area.

“Aalborg Forsyning has been and is still in an ongoing dialogue with Glencore about our CSR requirements. With regard to the specific criticism from Danwatch about negative environmental impacts, Glencore has communicated in detail about a due diligence effort with a system for monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of the effort.

“Furthermore, Glencore has confirmed that it implements all elements of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights. Aalborg Forsyning has also shared its own impact assessments with Glencore, so they know the minimum level of information we expect to receive.”

Per Clausen will now consider the new information provided by Danwatch, but does not want to rule out doing business with Glencore again.

“We find that it is useful to make demands on Glencore and to follow up, and we will continue to do so. We believe that Glencore is one of the suppliers we can choose in terms of CSR, and therefore, also for security of supply reasons, we will not rule out buying coal from them again at some point.”

“We will include the statements you have made from your field trip in our further work and compare them with the other information we have.”

The paramilitary groups

Shortly before this story is due to be published, chaos ensues at El Turbión.

El Turbión has been threatened and is in the process of clarifying whether this has anything to do with their investigation of the Cerrejón mine and Glencore.

Everyone we speak to in Colombia who has been fighting against the mine and Glencore has been threatened or harassed. None of them can prove that this comes directly from Glencore, but in the past Glencore has been criticised for its close ties to the country’s paramilitary movements.

In 2014, for example, the peace movement PAX presented testimonies from employees of one of Glencore’s subsidiaries explaining how they had helped fund the paramilitary group Juan Andrés Álvarez Front.

Samuel Arregoces is one of those who has felt the threats. He is an activist and comes from a town that has been cleared to make way for the Cerrejón mine.

For a number of years he has been fighting against the mine, but along the way he has had to go into hiding elsewhere in Colombia when the threats to his family became too intense.

A few days after we interviewed Samuel Arregoces, he suddenly writes. He was driving with another journalist and his security guard when a motorcycle pulled up alongside the car. When Samuel Arregoces looked out the window, he saw that the motorcyclist was wearing a balaclava. He instinctively hit the accelerator to get away, but the motorcycle followed him for several kilometres until they approached a police checkpoint.

Samuel Arregoces doesn’t know who the man was, but he knows for sure why he was there.

“There is no doubt that it is related to my activism against Cerrejón and against coal mining, and we are in the middle of a tough fight to defend the Bruno watercourse. This is what I do and I have no other enemies,” he explains.

Danwatch has spoken with one of the residents of Puerto Bolivar, Mr. José Tomas Freile Gonzales. He says that dust from Glencore’s coal transports pollutes and harms health. What’s Glencore’s position on this? Does Glencore recognise this problem? What has Glencore done to prevent this?

Cerrejón recognises that open-pit mining releases particles into the air (dust) that must be controlled and takes all necessary measures to reduce this impact through strict systems that use the latest technology to control the amount of dust in the air.

Since 2017, we have used our own TARP (Trigger Actions Response Plan) mechanism to monitor the air, which defines and anticipates possible scenarios where the level of particulate concentration (residual particles in the air) may be elevated during the operation, and have established a monitoring system, unique in Latin America, to monitor compliance with PM10 and PM2.5 particulate levels in real time via monitoring in 17 stations at the mine, on the railway and in the port. This allows us to know the evolution of air quality and adopt timely, preventive and corrective measures such as watering roads, fog cannons and sprinklers (which use industrial water that is not suitable for human and animal consumption or agriculture), changes in the mining plan, stopping specific equipment or even shutting down operations. Coal emissions are controlled throughout the train transport by moistening and compressing coal in all carriages, which prevents the dust from being released.

Danwatch has also spoken with several workers from the Cerrejón mine who have become seriously ill (a disease recognised by the Colombian Ministry of Labour as being related to working in the coal mine). They claim that Cerrejón didn’t want to recognise their illness or take responsibility – and that you’re not living up to your responsibilities to your workers. Does Cerrejón/Glencore recognise this problem? What has Cerrejón/Glencore done to prevent this?

This question doesn’t specify which Cerrejón workers are being referred to, so we cannot give a specific answer. However, it is important to clarify that Cerrejón’s employees are all registered with the Colombian social security system and the assessments of the origin of an illness are not made by the companies. It is the official Occupational Risk Administrator and the Health Promotion Units that carry out such assessments, with the possibility of escalating them to the Regional Qualification Councils and the National Qualification Councils (all entities of the Colombian social security system).

Cerrejón provides all the necessary information to these entities. If a worker is diagnosed with an illness and the treating physicians issue recommendations or restrictions on work, these are taken care of. The worker enters a rehabilitation or readaptation process in accordance with the medical report. The above is a shared responsibility between the social health system, the company and the employee.

In addition, Cerrejón is committed to implementing robust health, safety and labour practices and adopts nationally and internationally recognised standards to ensure respect for labour rights and a safe and healthy environment. We implement controls and measures that enable us to maintain our high operational standards and ensure the physical and mental well-being of our employees.

Our over 30-year-old occupational health and safety management system (SG-SST) is based on Colombian legislation and the requirements of the ISO 45001 standard, through which we define our strategic work plans every year. In this way, we establish continuous improvement initiatives and take action with the participation of our employees in different scenarios, such as:

  • We provide all employees with personal protective equipment and promote its correct and mandatory use in our operations.
  • We customize rest and recreation areas that feature soundproofed and air-conditioned cabins and loungers for a good rest during the workday, as well as active break modules with audio-visual guides for exercise training.
  • We have implemented all measures to control sleep and fatigue, such as installing sleep and fatigue monitoring devices in all mining equipment and using technology to identify and analyse information in real time, as well as constant monitoring and communication with employees, especially during night shifts.

Social leaders, environmentalists and activists that we have interviewed, including Mr. Samuel Arregoces, who has been critical of Cerrejón, tell us that they have suffered threats against their person and many of them have been subjected to violent attacks. Organisations like Indepaz tell us that this is systematic. Does Cerrejón/Glencore recognise this problem? What has Cerrejón/Glencore done to prevent this? How do their descriptions of threats align with the fact that Glencore itself writes that it is very committed to following the UN Global Compact, that it is committed to ESG, and that it has a “raising concerns policy” where it has zero tolerance for threats against those who know about issues related to Glencore?

It is relevant to clarify that threats against social leaders are a systematic problem that has existed in Colombia for several years, and it is the state’s duty to guarantee the physical integrity and safety of individuals. Given the complexity of the situation, Cerrejón has a zero-tolerance policy towards threats and attacks on human rights defenders in La Guajira and has publicly condemned these ugly acts. Cerrejón has a due diligence process to alert the relevant authorities when these situations occur, requesting immediate action to protect the lives and dignity of these leaders and to investigate the incidents so that the perpetrators can be found and brought to justice.

Cerrejón partnered with the NGO CREER to increase confidence in La Guajira among key players and to strengthen local capacity to prevent and investigate these cases. In addition, Cerrejón works with national state institutions such as the Office of the Presidential Advisor for Human Rights, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Mining and the National Mining Agency, which addressed the common concern about the increased number of cases of threats, attacks or assassinations of social leaders in the country.

Despite disagreements with some leaders, Cerrejón promotes a culture of greater participation and openness to dialogue, and it does not accept any form of intimidation of any member of the community. Any specific case can be presented by the community to the Cerrejón Ethics Hotline or to the Cerrejón Complaints Office.

In the case of the leader Samuel Arregoces, Cerrejón learned of threats in October 2021 and activated the protocol for these cases, informing the competent authorities (the mayor’s office, the national police, the office of the Minister of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior, the national and regional ombudsman, etc.) and requesting immediate measures to protect Mr Arregoces.

According to the Colombian Ministry of Environment, Cerrejón has diverted at least 17 streams in La Guajira. Currently, the Bruno watercourse is at stake – we’ve spoken to several leaders who are defending the Bruno watercourse. The local population wants to keep their water resource – and water is crucial to their indigenous Wayuu culture. What is Cerrejón/Glencore’s responsibility for the water crisis in La Guajira? How does Glencore as a company ensure that it does not exacerbate this already extremely critical situation?

At Cerrejón, we are aware of the challenges that exist in La Guajira due to the traditional water deficit in the region and have managed to halve the consumption of high quality water (from the Ranchería River and its aquifer) over the last 10 years. Water used for dust control is low-quality water extracted from coal seams or rainwater that is neither suitable for human or animal consumption nor for agriculture. Currently, only 11% of the water taken from the Ranchería River is of higher quality, which is primarily used for human consumption. The rest of the water consumed (89%) is used to control particles and comply with air quality levels. As it passes through Cerrejón, the flow of the Ranchería River is measured at three stations (before, during and after mining). The data shows that the flow rate increases by up to 39% as it passes through the mining area.

Regarding the partial diversion of the Bruno watercourse in 2016, Cerrejón diverted 3.6 km of the Bruno watercourse 700 metres north of its original course to protect and preserve the watercourse as the operation progressed. Six years after carrying out the channel modification, the Bruno watercourse is flowing appropriately. Monitoring of the water (surface and underground) has been carried out in the area and, according to the Colombian IDEAM data, it has been confirmed that the amount of water currently flowing is similar to that which used to flow in the old canal before modification. In addition, it is clear that there is no impact on the groundwater or surface water of the watercourse.

Monitoring of flora and fauna has also shown that the new canal has become a biodiversity corridor with the presence of several species, including 380 aquatic species, 46 fish species, 66 ant species, 42 dung beetles, 125 butterfly species, 19 amphibian species, 46 reptile species, 218 bird species and 51 mammal species in the area.

The statements and documentation from the local population contradict the UN guidelines and the OECD guidelines. Why aren’t you complying with them? And what will Glencore do to comply in the future?

Cerrejón’s commitments in La Guajira extend far beyond the investment, the payment of taxes and the creation of quality jobs. We strive to apply the highest standards of ethics and respect in our relationships with all our stakeholders. Similarly, we are committed to developing our operations in an environmentally responsible way and leaving a natural legacy for future generations. We act on the principle of continuous improvement to strengthen our human rights due diligence processes. For this reason, we comply with various international standards and our human rights policy is in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Off the coast of Syria and near Norway’s border in the Arctic sail three frigates that are of utmost importance to Russia’s maritime power.

The frigates belong to the Admiral Gorshkov class, which are renowned and highly advanced ships in the Russian Navy. Equipped with Russia’s new Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, they have the capability to strike targets up to 1,000 kilometers away.

Based on official documents that Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have obtained, we can now reveal that these frigates are built using products from the Danish Rockwool Group.

For the past months Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have covered how large parts of the Russian Navy is insulated with Rockwool. These three frigates represent the most significant, prestigious, and crucial Russian project that is known to have used Rockwool thus far.

According to military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen from the Danish Defense Academy, the frigates play a vital role in Putin’s military strategy.

“They hold immense importance for Russia’s navy as they enable operations over great distances. The frigates possess substantial firepower, allowing them to engage other ships and even carry out land bombardments,” he explains.

Rockwool itself does not directly sell its products to end customers in the Russian market but relies on a network of distributors. Particularly one of these officially certified partners, a company called Marine Complex Systems LLC (“MKS”), is responsible for a significant portion of the deliveries of Rockwool to the Russian Navy, including those used for the frigates.

MKS, a Russian company with more than 150 employees, specializes in work on military ships for the Russian Ministry of Defense. It has military approval and is certified by the FSB to handle state secrets. And since at least 2013 it has been a regular distributor for Rockwool, supplying the Russian Navy with Rockwool products worth at least 100 million rubles.

For the frigates, the first deal occurred in October 2013, when MKS agreed to supply more than 3,000 square meters of Rockwool insulation to the Severnaya Verf shipyard. According to the documents, this stone wool insulation was specifically intended for the lead ship of the series, “Admiral Gorshkov.”

In August 2015, a year after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, MKS once again provided Rockwool insulation to Severnaya Verf. This involved two contracts, totaling 19,200 square meters of insulation for the subsequent ships in the series, namely “Admiral Kasatonov” and “Admiral Golovko.”

Overall, the three Rockwool contracts had a value of more than 12.1 million rubles, equivalent to over 1.5 million Danish kroner at the time.

Denies any relations with the military

Despite numerous inquiries from Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet, Rockwool has declined to be interviewed about how their materials ended up in the three frigates. Instead, we have sent a number of written questions to Rockwool’s Danish headquarters concerning the transactions and the cooperation with the distributor MKS.

However, Rockwool Group’s head of communications, Michael Zarin, chose to ignore these questions and instead provided a general statement about Rockwool’s continuing presence in Russia, which he had also previously sent us. He further writes:

“Through distributors, our products are widely available on the Russian market, as is the case in many other markets. Neither ROCKWOOL A/S nor our Russian subsidiaries directly sell to Russian end users or have a customer relationship with the Russian military.”

“At ROCKWOOL, we typically do not comment on the specific details you have inquired about regarding particular projects or customer relationships. However, as we have previously mentioned, ROCKWOOL maintains comprehensive guidelines for risk assessments and due diligence.”

Michael Zarin did not disclose what specific kind of risk assessment Rockwool has conducted in relation to the deliveries to the Russian military, nor did he explain why Rockwool continued its cooperation with MKS for several years despite MKS’ regular deliveries to the Russian military.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have presented Rockwool with information regarding the distributor MKS’s contracts with Severnaya Verf and have invited Rockwool to be interviewed about the issue. Rockwool declines this offer.

Instead, we have presented a series of written questions:

  • Was Rockwool aware that its products were being used to construct frigates for the Russian Navy?
  • Did Rockwool receive project specifications prior to executing the orders?
  • Rockwool’s longstanding distributor, MKS LLC, brands itself as a major supplier to Russia’s warships. Did Rockwool have any concerns about partnering with a company whose primary business is with the military?
  • Between 2015 and 2020, MKS LLC equipped Russian warships with Rockwool products worth 100 million rubles, equivalent to over 110,000 m2 of Rockwool stone wool sheets. Does this align with Rockwool’s values?
  • On MKS’ website, there is a certificate indicating that Rockwool has appointed MKS as an official distributor in Russia. What requirements and guidelines has Rockwool established for its official distributors and business partners regarding the end use of your products?
  • Apart from the three frigates mentioned, is Rockwool aware of its products being used in other frigates of project 22350?

Press officer Helge Coroli Frandsen answered with a general written statement, that does not directly address our questions. The statement (translated from Danish by Danwatch) is attributed to Rockwool’s head of communications, Michael Zarin:

“Until February 2022, it was common practice for Danish and international companies to operate in Russia. Therefore, it is not unusual that both ROCKWOOL and other Danish and foreign companies conducted business there during the period between Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and their invasion of Ukraine.

Our products are widely available on the Russian market through distributors, as is the case in many other markets. Neither ROCKWOOL A/S nor our Russian subsidiaries directly sell to Russian end users or have a customer relationship with the Russian military.

Normally, ROCKWOOL does not comment on the details you are enquiring about, which relates to specific projects or customer details. However, as previously stated, ROCKWOOL maintains comprehensive guidelines for risk assessments and due diligence. ROCKWOOL has complied with all Russia-related sanctions, as confirmed by the Danish Business Authority.”

Rockwool’s factories in Russia are not directly subject to EU laws and sanctions. Nonetheless, Rockwool is committed to adhering to the UN Guidelines on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which require companies to ensure that they do not contribute to human rights violations at any stage of their value chain.

Rockwool in Putin’s Navy

In collaboration with Ekstra Bladet, Danwatch has uncovered a systematic use of Rockwool for insulating ships for Russia’s Ministry of Defence. The investigation has so far identified the following projects:

  • Project 22350: A minimum of three vessels in the cutting-edge Admiral Gorshkov missile frigate series. These frigates are officially assigned to Russia’s Northern Fleet in Murmansk, situated near Norway’s Arctic border.
  • Project 21980: A minimum of four armed anti-sabotage ships tasked with safeguarding the nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet at Gadzhijevo, Murmansk near the Norwegian border.
  • Project 21180: The icebreaker “Ilya Muromets“, which is the first icebreaker constructed for the Russian military since the Soviet era. This vessel is also assigned to the Northern Fleet in Murmansk, where its purpose is to clear the way through Arctic ice for the fleet’s warships and submarines.
  • Project 23120: The logistical support ship “Vsevolod Bobrov” was added to the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea in 2022. During the very first days of the 2022 invasion, this ship played a role in the battle for the strategically significant “Snake Island”.

Furthermore, the leading Danish stone wool producer has supplied insulation materials for use in the Russian Ministry of Defense headquarters in Moscow, the naval headquarters in St. Petersburg, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs head office in Moscow.

Responsibility for the entire value chain

If their subsidiary in Russia sells to distributors who then sell to the Russian military, then Rockwool naturally has a responsibility over the entire value chain. They can’t just say that they didn’t know
Fernanda Hopenhaym Cabrera
Member of UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights

Fernanda Hopenhaym Cabrera is a member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights which works towards implementing and advising on the UNGPs. She believes that Rockwool bears responsibility for the fact that its products are now installed in three active frigates in Russia’s navy.

“If their subsidiary in Russia sells to distributors who then sell to the Russian military, then Rockwool naturally has a responsibility over the entire value chain. They can’t just say that they didn’t know,” says Hopenhaym Cabrera.

The UN guidelines are applicable to all companies, irrespective of whether they choose to acknowledge them or not. However, companies like Rockwool, which publicly commit to complying with the UNGPs, are expected to uphold those commitments, according to Hopenhaym Cabrera.

“A company that has a human rights policy and publicly commits to the UNGPs should have mechanisms in place to ensure that its products do not end up contributing to human rights violations,” she emphasizes.

Hopenhaym Cabrera points to the fact that two of the deliveries occurred after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, a period marked by Russia’s military aggression and well-documented human rights violations. Under such circumstances, companies are expected to conduct enhanced due diligence for their business operations.

“It appears that Rockwool, in this instance, has not carried out this enhanced due diligence for their entire value chain and business partners. If they want to have operations that are human rights respecting and to comply with their human rights responsibilities, they should have taken greater action in this type of setting”.

The shipyard confirms

For corvettes, we purchase insulation from the company Tizol, and for frigates – from Rockwool
Severnaya Verf
January 2020

In addition to the three frigates that are built already, the shipyard Severnaya Verf is currently constructing five more frigates of the same type. Furthermore, they have signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense for two additional frigates.

This suggests that there may be more contracts involving Rockwool than the three that are known to Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet.

We have reached out to Severnaya Verf for a comment regarding their use of Rockwool for warships, but they have not returned our emails. However, in a 2020 article published by the Russian military publication Mil.Press, the shipyard’s press department confirmed the utilization of Rockwool in frigates:

“For corvettes, we purchase insulation from the company Tizol, and for frigates – from Rockwool”.

The press department further added, “Rockwool initially had supplies from Finland, but now the Rockwool factory operates in Vyborg. The quality of products from these companies meets the requirements of the supervisory authorities and our customer.”

We have also reached out to Rockwool’s distributor Marine Complex Systems LLC (“MKS”), but they did not respond to our request for comment.

Meet Vladimir Putin’s new class of missile frigates

Vladimir Putin visited Severnaya Verf in 2019 for a keel-laying ceremony of two new frigates of project 22350. Photo: Kremlin.

The Russian Navy’s latest frigates has captured both international and domestic attention, making headlines worldwide.

The Admiral Gorshkov series of frigates, measuring 135 meters in length, boast a top speed of 29.5 knots and are equipped with an array of weaponry, including Kalibr cruise missiles, anti-aircraft guns, anti-submarine weapons, and the A-192M artillery system.

Notably, these frigates also feature Russia’s latest hypersonic Zircon missiles, capable of striking targets up to 1,000 kilometers away.

During a ceremony in January of this year, President Putin praised the frigates, particularly the inclusion of the Zircon missiles, as the frigate “Admiral Gorshkov” was commissioned into active combat duty.

“It [the Zircon missile] has no analogue in any country in the world. I know that such powerful weapons will make it possible to reliably defend Russia from potential external threats and will help ensure our national interests,” remarked President Putin.

The following video, sourced from Russia’s Ministry of Defense, showcases the “Admiral Gorshkov” conducting artillery fire against a naval target in the Atlantic Ocean in February 2023.

According to plan, “Admiral Gorshkov” will embark on an extensive voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. The vessel is fully prepared for combat, as confirmed by Commander Ivan Krokhmal, who reported to President Putin during the ceremony in January.

Krokhmal stated that the ship was “equipped with ammunition for the missiles in the Zircon and Caliber systems, air defence systems, torpedo weapons, and artillery. The crew of the ship is ready to carry out the tasks of combat duty.”

Recently, satellite images captured “Admiral Gorshkov” at the Russian naval base in Tartus, a port city in Syria, on April 29.

According to Russian news agency Tass, the “Admiral Gorshkov”, which can accommodate a crew of up to 210, will be patrolling the Mediterranean during May and June. Afterward, it will return to Russia’s Northern Fleet based in Murmansk, near the Arctic border with Norway.

Military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen from the Danish Defense Academy assesses that this strategy aligns with the Russian navy’s objectives.

“These ships enable them to operate over great distances. Unlike small corvettes confined to naval bases, frigates like these can be deployed worldwide. Russia has utilized this capability for long voyages to regions such as the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. These frigates possess the endurance and long-range missile capabilities to cover vast areas. As a result, they pose a threat from considerable distances and bring substantial firepower to the battlefield,” he says.

The second frigate in the series, “Admiral Kasatonov,” which was commissioned in 2020, has also attracted significant attention in the media.

Here is a photo of “Admiral Kasatonov” during the final rehearsal for the grand naval parade in St. Petersburg in 2021. Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense.

In March 2023, the frigate returned to the Northern Fleet base in Severomorsk after an unprecedented journey lasting over 420 days. Remarkably, the frigate had covered a distance equivalent to circling the world three times.

During its return voyage to Severomorsk, the “Admiral Kasatonov” attracted the attention of the Spanish, Dutch, and English fleets, who closely monitored the frigate’s passage through their respective waters.

In Severomorsk, the “Admiral Kasatonov” will be joined by the third frigate in the series, the “Admiral Golovko.” The Russian Ministry of Defense reports that “Admiral Golovko” is currently undergoing final tests at the Russian Navy’s combat training ranges in the Barents Sea. Following the completion of these tests, it is scheduled to officially join the Northern Fleet in June.

The third ship in the series, “Admiral Golovko” is currently undergoing the final tests. Photo: Ministry of Defense of Russia

Apart from the three completed frigates already mentioned, the Severnaya Verf shipyard is actively engaged in the construction of five additional frigates of the same type.

These forthcoming vessels bear the names “Admiral Isakov,” “Admiral Amelko,” “Admiral Chichagov,” “Admiral Yumashev,” and “Admiral Spiridonov.”

Furthermore, Severnaya Verf has secured a contract for two more frigates named “Admiral Kapitanets” and “Admiral Vysotsky.”

In April 2019, Vladimir Putin personally visited the shipyard to commemorate the keel-laying ceremony for two of the under-construction frigates, “Admiral Amelko” and “Admiral Chichagov.”

In spring, two Greenlandic officials from the Ministry of Mineral Resources in Nuuk traveled to Copenhagen. They knew that they were due to appear before the Court of Arbitration, but they did not anticipate what awaited them in the court room located in a glass building overlooking the Langelinie promenade in Copenhagen.

They were met with seventeen lawyers, each representing an international mining company.

The lawyers were claiming damages that could topple Greenland’s economy and an ultimatum to the Cabinet of Greenland: either you give the green light to the controversial Kvanefjeld mining project in South Greenland, or you cough up money.

  1. The mining company Energy Transition Minerals has filed an arbitration case against the Government of Greenland and the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities.
  2. The mining company has not been allowed to extract critical minerals in the Kvanefjeld deposit because it is in violation with a new uranium law.
  3. Energy Transition Minerals, formerly known as Greenland Minerals, claims that it has met all regulatory requirements and therefore has the right to proceed with the project, which received its first exploration license in 2007.
  4. If Energy Transition Minerals do not obtain this permission, they threaten to file for damages.
  5. The law firm Kammeradvokaten who are representing Greenland and Denmark, believe these damages could amount to 15 billion Danish kroner.
  6. Experts have informed Danwatch and the Danish newspaper Politiken that Greenland has a weak case and they risk scaring away future investors.
  7. Sources have told Danwatch and Politiken that the main reason the mining project is not getting the green light from the Cabinet of Greenland is because Energy Transition Minerals is Chinese owned.

Danwatch, in collaboration with Politiken, can now disclose several new details in the Kvanefjeld case, which has major political implications and could ultimately leave Danish taxpayers with a huge bill.

For years, the mining company, Energy Transition Minerals, has been trying to get permission to extract critical minerals from Kvanefjeld, which boasts one of the largest deposits in the world.

But alongside the critical minerals, there are the radioactive substances uranium and thorium that could pose a risk to Greenlanders living near Kvanefjeld.

Therefore, with a new uranium law in hand, Greenland will soon reject the mining company’s application.

Energy Transition Minerals are aware of this, which is why they will counter with a claim for damages that could amount to 15 billion Danish kroner, which corresponds to at least three years of the block grant that Denmark gives Greenland.

Our assessment is that we have the right to get an exploitation license, and that is the right we are trying to enforce.
Miles Guy
Chief Financial Officer, Energy Transition Minerals (formerly Greenland Minerals) 

But the case is about much more than the legal dispute between the mining company and the Cabinet of Greenland.

The critical minerals in Kvanefjeld are essential for a green energy transition and are at the center of a security race between the US and China, who are both lurking in the wings.

The case is shrouded in its own mystery.

Many sources have something to say about Kvanefjeld, but few will put it in writing.

To get the whole picture, we have to go back 70 years to the first pursuit for critical minerals in Greenland’s subsoil.

Hope and fear surround Kvanefjeld

Hope and fear have encircled Kvanefjeld in South Greenland since the 1950s, when Niels Bohr first set foot on the mountain. It was the famous Danish nuclear physicist who discovered the minerals in the mountain and envisaged mining uranium for Danish nuclear power plants.

Even then, the inhabitants of the town of Narsaq, which lies at the foot of the mountain, feared the deadly contamination and radioactive irradiation, for the sake of their children and animals.

Deep in Kuannersuit, the Greenlandic name for Kvanefjeld, there is also one of the world’s largest deposits of critical minerals.

It is the mineral Steenstrupine, named after the Danish geologist K. J. V. Steenstrup, which is gaining interest because it contains fifteen of the critical minerals that are in short supply needed for the technology that will ensure the green energy transition.

But it is difficult to excavate these critical minerals without bringing uranium to the surface and exposing humans and animals to radiation hazards.

That is why it was controversial when the mining company, then called Greenland Minerals, was granted an exploration license for Kvanefjeld in 2007.

The geological surveys by the mining company were promising. In the mountain’s interior, the much sought-after minerals were found in large quantities. So were uranium and thorium.

And while the mining company saw big business in the mine, the radioactive substances caused fear among many Greenlanders, and a popular protest movement coalesced around the slogan ‘urani naamik’, no to uranium.

At the same time, the planned construction of the mine raised concerns among professionals. The mining company would dig a hole in the mountain top and dump the toxic and radioactive wastewater into a lake behind a dam at the top of the mountain.

If something went wrong, it could prove fatal for the town of Narsaq at the mountain’s foot. In the past, several similar dams have burst. Hundreds of lives were lost.

Nevertheless in 2021, the Greenlandic authorities gave the mining company’s environmental report the green light. The next step was to gain permission to extract 30,000 tons of critical minerals per year, for the next 37 years.

But then the proposed mine at Kvanefjeld was hit by another significant crisis. Policy.

Resistance unites

The same spring that the mining company got the environmental report approved, Greenlanders went to the polls.

And the mining project was top of the agenda. In many places, posters displaying ‘urani naamik’ were alongside election posters. An opinion poll in South Greenland showed that 71% of the population were against the mining project.

In fear that the project will scare away tourists or become a health hazard to the local population. More than half of the citizens did not trust the authorities to manage the Kvanefjeld project.

A 34-year-old man who grew up in Narsaq overlooking Kvanefjeld led the political opposition to the mining project. His name is Múte B. Egede, a former Minister for Raw Materials, leader of the opposition party IA (Inuit Ataqatigiit) and a fierce opponent of the mining company. After the election, he became the prime minister of Greenland.

“The people have spoken and the people are right, the project will not happen”, Múte B. Egede announced shortly after the April 2021 elections.

Seven months later, Inatsisartut, the Parliament of Greenland, convened on a new law, which passed by a slim majority.

Politicians adopt the ban on uranium, a death sentence for the Kvanefjeld project. The path to critical minerals and uranium is definitively blocked by a five-paragraph law. The day after the election, Greenland Minerals’ shares fall by 44 percent.

Authorization before compensation

Today, two years later, the project is in a strange kind of limbo. On one side of the conflict is an accountant, on the other a lawyer.

The accountant is Miles Guy, Chief Financial Officer of Energy Transition Minerals, formally Greenland Minerals. He has been involved since 2009 and he has seen several attempts to shut down the project. The Uranium Act is another setback in the fight for Kvanefjeld.

“They passed a law at the 11th hour to stop this project”, says Miles Guy about the uranium law.

But the mining company has not given up yet, and Miles Guy insists that they have complied with all the requirements set by the authorities.

“Our assessment is that we are entitled to an exploitation license, and that is the right we are trying to enforce. If it is proven that we are not entitled to it, our argument will be that we have been expropriated and are therefore entitled to compensation. But our primary goal is to enforce our right to an exploitation license,” he says, pointing a legal gun towards the government of Greenland and in part Denmark too, to which this case is also directed.

Denmark’s role in the dispute

  • The mining company has brought the case against both Greenland and Denmark, because the Minerals Authority was part of the Danish civil service at the start of the mining project in 2007. Denmark also pays one third of the costs of the case.
  • The Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy has no comment on the case as long as it is pending in court.

The lawyer is Jørgen Hammeken-Holm, who has just celebrated his 25th anniversary as a civil servant in the Greenlandic civil service.

As Permanent Secretary for Mineral Resources, he has seen politicians come and go over the years, and this is not the first time an Australian mining company has flexed its muscles in front of him and his small office.

“I sleep peacefully at night”, says Jørgen Hammeken-Holm.

He denies that the mining company has been expropriated.

Instead, he believes that the uranium law trumps the authorization previously granted and the new legislation is one that everyone must follow.

The Uranium Act allows existing projects to emit 0.01 percent uranium as a by-product when, for example, extracting critical minerals. But new mining projects that were applied for after December 2021 are not allowed to extract uranium at all.

This applies to permission for preliminary investigation, exploration and exploitation.

In Greenland Minerals’ first exploration licence aquired in 2007, the company wanted to extract both uranium and critical minerals. This is now prohibited.

Therefore, the company submitted another application to extract the critical minerals, and the uranium that would also be mined from the mountain as a by-product would be poured back into the mine.

This would keep it below the 0.01 percent uranium threshold, the company said. However, with yet another application, this would mean that now the company would not be allowed to mine uranium at all, according to the Uranium Act.

Therefore, the new application will also be rejected, says Hammeken-Holm, who believes that the company’s solution of pouring uranium back into the mine will result in uranium contamination, and their limit of 0.01 percent will be exceeded.

“Naalakkersuisut, the Cabinet of Greenland, decides on the grounds of the rules in force at any given time.

The Uranium Act specifies which licenses the Act applies to, and the Government of Greenland must, of course, follow those rules”, he says.

If Greenland and Denmark end up losing the case, Jørgen Hammeken-Holm does not belive that the two countries could be ordered to pay compensation.

Instead, he suspects that the judges will tell the Government of Greenland that it has interpreted the rules incorrectly.

Compensation is out of the question because, according to him, the law does not allow for expropriation.

“This means that the lawsuit has to begin from the point where it was last left off. In the worst case, we would start the lawsuit from where we left it and in doing so they can get an exploitation license,” says Jørgen Hammeken-Holm.

Gambling with your own future

While Jørgen Hammeken-Holm is confident, experts warn that Greenland is gambling with its own future.

Poul Hauch Fenger is a lawyer with expertise in international law.

As a lawyer, he has had insight into several arbitration cases and believes that from the outside it seems as if Greenland has adopted the new uranium law in an attempt to stop the mining project in Kvanefjeld.

In his opinion, this creates a “Gordian knot” for Energy Transmission Minerals, because the mining project has been organized according to an existing legislation and is now suddenly presented with a completely new and stricter legislation.

“With the proviso that I do not know the finer details of the case, I would say that the existing legislation must be stronger than the new legislation. Therefore, my immediate thought would be that mining company has a good case”, he says, also issuing a warning to Greenland:

“When companies consider throwing millions or billions of dollars into a project, they do so based on the expectation that their investment will be returned. But if they can see that the political climate means that a new, blocking legislation can suddenly be adopted, they could find themselves on thin ice and become very reluctant to invest,” says Poul Hauch Fenger.

Former Deputy Director of the research institution GEUS (Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland) Flemming Christiansen agrees.

He believes the case presents Greenland with a “credibility problem”.

“As a matter of principle, you don’t legislate retroactively, as I believe has happened here. Previously, it would have been the case that you would automatically get an exploitation license if you had first obtained an exploration license and at the same time met the requirements laid down,” says Flemming Christiansen.

He also believes that the lawsuit’s biggest loser will be the green energy transition.

“If people are going to have electric cars and wind turbines, then somewhere in the world mining must be carried out to get the metals we need,” he says, arguing that concerns about radiation could be addressed through various forms of environmental protection.

The easy alternative is for Greenland to allow the project to proceed in a form that is as safe as possible for everyday life around Kvanefjeld.

This will provide Greenland with jobs and large tax revenues, while making critical minerals available as soon as possible for the green energy transition.

And it would certainly avoid a potential bill of 15 billion Danish kroner.

But against this backdrop and with cryptic references, sources say that you have to look beyond Greenland to understand why the government of Greenland does not just take the easy way out.

You have to look to the east.

The threat lies far away from South Greenland

On a winter afternoon in 2019, a Chinese man takes the stage at a conference at Industriens Hus in Copenhagen and begins to speak.

The man’s name is Mr. Hu Zesong, and the Confederation of Danish Industries has invited him to talk about mining investments in Greenland.

Mr. Hu Zesong is the CEO of the Chinese company Shenghe Resources, one of China’s leading companies in the processing of critical minerals and uranium.

Mr. Hu Zesong is enthusiastic about the Kvanefjeld project in Greenland and about Energy Transition Minerals, of which Shenghe Resources owns 12.5 percent.

Chinese co-ownership has caused a stir in Greenland, particularly back in 2016 when it emerged that Shenghe Resources had the opportunity to buy 60 percent of shares in the mining company.

But Shenghe Resources are also interesting because they are partly owned by the Chinese state and are a crucial piece in China’s attempt to control the world’s critical minerals.

Until the Uranium Act, all indications were that when critical minerals were extracted from Kvanefjeld, they would be shipped to China, where Shenghe Resources, together with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), would process them.

This in itself is controversial because the two Chinese companies agreed to import critical minerals into China, where they would be separated from the thorium and uranium, both of which can be used as radioactive fuel.

For example, in nuclear weapons.

The US authorities link the China National Nuclear Corporation to the Chinese military.

The great race

It is important to understand the role of Shenghe Resources because they are one of China’s key players in the great power struggle for critical minerals, and because it is a battle that is largely being played out on Greenland soil.

In 2019, the then US President, Donald Trump, even wanted to buy Greenland, while the then US Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands participated in ceremonies and excursions to Kvanefjeld and the US opened an Arctic Embassy in Nuuk.

During a trip to South Greenland, the US Geological Survey determined that “one of the world’s largest reserves of critical minerals is found here”.

On the other hand, the US and China have been fighting over the rights to a mining project at Citronen Fjord in North Greenland.

Another Chinese company, General Nice, in 2015 bought a company that holds the rights to a large iron mine at Isua, not far from the capital, Nuuk.

The EU has opened an official office in Greenland as part of its new Arctic policy.

And the EU is very clear about the need to access Arctic resources, the vast majority of which are held by China.

While Greenland does not have a problem with Chinese investments, Danish and American politicians are quite nervous about them.

Recent threat assessments by the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste) state that the threat of espionage from China is increasing and commercial interests can lead to political influence. And most recently, last week PET warned of a massive and growing espionage threat from China.

In July 2021, Denmark adopted two laws to prevent foreign investments and economic agreements – mainly Russian and Chinese – from threatening Denmark’s national security.

The chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael Aastrup Jensen, urges Greenland and the Faroe Islands to implement the same type of laws.

The warnings were clear during the meeting at Parliament.

“We need to look at how we can have closer cooperation on critical infrastructure,” Aastrup Jensen told the Greenlandic and Faroese members for parliament.

In less than two months, the army of lawyers will meet again in the Copenhagen Arbitration Court.

Three judges have to decide whether the case should go to arbitration at all or be transferred to the ordinary courts.

In that case, the lawsuit is likely to be played out in the courts in Greenland until the dispute is settled.

The battle for Kvanefjeld continues.

From the Iqon skyscraper in Quito, Ecuador, to a triangular apartment building in New York and the CopenHill in Copenhagen.

The architecture of Danish star architect Bjarke Ingels boasts Danish innovation and talent, the world over.

Danwatch and Frihedsbrevet have evidence that the portfolio of Ingels and his architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group’s (BIG) now also includes the controversial future city of Neom in Saudi Arabia.

The city of the future, often described as a dystopia, has been associated with murder and forced displacement even before the city opens it’s doors.

Neom is also a prestige project for Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is known for his brutal crackdown on dissidents.

BIG’s involvement in Neom has not been made public so far, but social media and reports from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that BIG has been paid by the Saudi regime for the concept design of the floating industrial city of Oxagon, which will be a part of Neom.

A report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that BIG has “been responsible for the development of the master plans for the mega-projects NEOM and Qiddyah, which have a strong focus on sustainable development”.

BIG neither confirms nor denys whether it is involved in the city of the future, but a quote from Bjarke Ingels in the British newspaper The Guardian, may have hinted at it.

The Danish architect allegedly said that he is involved in a confidential project in Saudi Arabia, which he describes as a “human-made ecosystem that is as close to a utopia as you dare imagine”.

A phrase and sentiment that is often used when describing Neom.

The floating industrial city

Neom is the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and part of the large-scale ‘Vision 2030’ plan to move away from oil.

It is often referred to as one city, but in reality it is an area the size of Belgium that will be home to several cities of the future, raised from the endless sand in the middle of the desert.

One of the cities is the octagonal industrial mecca of Oxagon.

As with everything else in Neom, the plans are ambitious: the city will be split down the middle by a canal for heavy shipping traffic, and if the city comes into realization, it will be the world’s largest floating construction.

According to the published plans, Oxagon will be located on the Red Sea, close to the Suez Canal, one of the world’s busiest shipping hubs.

An ideal location that will eventually, if all goes according to bin Salman’s plan, become a key player in global trade.

“Oxagon will be the catalyst for economic growth and diversity in Neom and the Kingdom, further meeting our ambitions under Vision 2030” the Crown Prince has said.

And the man and the architectural firm behind it are Danish.

In addition to the MFA report, a number of BIG employees state on their LinkedIn profiles that they are working on the “North & South master plan

for Oxagon”, while partners

state that BIG is the architect behind the project.

We don’t know how much BIG will earn from designing the master plan for Oxagon.

However, we know that working as an architect or consultant for Neom is a well paid gig.Last year, Bloomberg reported that Neom offered tax-free annual salaries of 5-6 million Danish kroner to foreigners who came to work on the city of the future.

As more and more people arrived in Neom, a joke began to circulate, according to Bloomberg:

When you start at Neom, you bring two buckets with you. The first one fills up with all the gold you earn, and it gets heavy fast. The other bucket will be filled up with all the shit you have to put up with. When the bucket of shit is full, you take the bucket of gold and leave.

We asked BIG how much they were earning from the project. A question they were not prepared to answer.

The assassination of Jamal Khashoggi

Danwatch and Frihedsbrevet have not been able to determine when and to what extent BIG has been involved in the Neom project.

Overall, it has been difficult to get the multi-million dollar company to talk.

But for several years, the project has been plagued by incidents and criticism.

Notably, the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 tarnished bin Salman’s vision.

The Crown Prince denies having been part of Khasghoggi’s assassination, but in 2021 the US published the American intelligence report,

which concluded that he authorized the assassination – and it was likely that he also ordered it.

Subsequently, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi prompted several architects to resign from Neom’s advisory board.

One of them was the world-famous architect Norman Foster, who wrote in an email to Danwatch that they are no longer part of the board.

Murder, expulsion and imprisonment

In recent years, it has emerged that the dream of Neom has turned into a nightmare for the area’s indigenous population.

To accommodate the project – including Oxagon – at least 20,000 members of the Huwaitat tribe are to be forcibly evicted from their land, a move that has been heavily criticized by several organizations.

“The effort to forcibly displace the indigenous population violates every norm and rule of international human rights law,” said Sarah Lea Whitson who is Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now among other titles.

For those who have rebelled, it has been at the risk of their lives.

One of whom was Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti, who was shot dead by Saudi security forces while fighting for his home.

Footage of Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti’s murder was shared in several videos over Twitter. In one of them you can hear Saudi security forces firing successions of gunfire, while in another you can see his home destroyed by bullet holes. Video: Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti (subtitles by Danwatch)

Others who have resisted have been imprisoned or sentenced to death.

A recent report on Neom’s human rights violations conducted by the Saudi human rights organization ALQST, listed 15 people who had received prison sentences, ranging from 15 to 50 years, and five others who had been sentenced to death.

No response from BIG

The stories from Neom are irreconcilable to what BIG has pledged in their 2021 Sustainability Report.

It states that “human rights are undeniable universal truths”.

“We are unwavering in our determination to give all people, as far as we can, the rights and freedoms they wish to enjoy. BIG will never knowingly be complicit in human rights abuses, but will instead always seek to uphold the rights and freedoms of all, and to contribute where we can”, the report reads.

Danwatch and Frihedsbrevet wish to discuss with Bjarke Ingels and BIG how their involvement in Neom complies with their sustainability report.

We want justification for their involvement in a project that is accused of gross human rights violations, so much so, that it has led other architects to withdraw their services.

Over several months Danwatch and Frihedsbrevet attempted to get answers from Bjarke Ingels and BIG; however, they failed to get them to comment on Neom.

Despite being a large international company, BIG’s press department can only be contacted by email.

Danwatch contacted them for the first time in January. After months, we received a reply from BIG partner Daria Pahhota. She apologized for the late reply, explaining that she and Bjarke are “currently on a documentary shoot”, but that she will look into the possibility of an interview “when we have some down time”.

After that, there was complete silence for over a week.

It was only after Frihedsbrevet and Danwatch sent specific questions about BIG’s involvement in Neom that we received a reply.

“Unfortunately, neither Bjarke nor Sheela (Director of BIG) are available for an interview right now, and we cannot confirm or deny our involvement in the Neom project”.

Major problems with human rights violations

For the past few years, Bjarke Ingels has been touring with his vision “Masterplanet”. An idea to redesign our planet to make it more sustainable and climate-friendly. In short, a plan to save the world.

Meanwhile, BIG has been in oil-dependent Saudi Arabia, which, according to numerous reports, is subjecting its own population to gross human rights violations.

For example, in 2019, it was announced that BIG had designed the master plan for the Saudi entertainment city of Qiddiyah, which is currently under construction.

In particular, Saudi Arabia has been criticized for restricting freedom of expression, and the freedom of assembly and association, while the occurrence of the death penalty has almost doubled in the last six years.

“It is no secret that there are many challenges in Saudi Arabia when it comes to human rights. That is labour rights, the rights of women, sexual minorities, defenders of human rights and journalists,” Louise Holck, Director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, has previously told Danwatch.

BIG: Architecture creates democracy

We asked BIG what considerations they made about being involved in Saudi Arabia, a country notorious for human rights abuses.

In the short response we received from BIG, partner Daria Pahhota wrote, “it is oversimplifying a large and complex urban planning project that is creating new buildings and public spaces for the ever-growing Saudi population,” when critics conflate working on Neom with working in Saudi Arabia.

She goes on to say:

“BIG, like other international firms, is active in the Middle East because architects contribute to positive development by providing new schools, libraries, cultural buildings and urban spaces.”

Bjarke Ingels has made similar statements in the past. Ingels told The Guardian,

“I do sincerely believe that the urban transformation of Saudi Arabia that we’re taking part in is part of paving a path to a clearly needed social and cultural reform of the country”.

And when Ingels met with controversial Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in 2020 to discuss options for an economically and ecologically sustainable tourism plan, the rhetoric was similar.

“Making a list of countries or companies that BIG should avoid working with seems to be an oversimplification of a complex world. Dividing everything into two categories is neither accurate nor fair,” Ingels continued:

“We cannot expect every public body to align with every aspect of our thinking. If we want to positively change the world, we need active engagement – not superficial clickbait and ignorance.”

“Complicit in Saudi Arabia’s crimes”

But this view is criticized by the Saudi human rights organization ALQST.

“When a company or an architect is part of Neom, they are also giving legitimacy to a project that is killing people. Neom is built on blood”, said Lina Alhathloul, Head of Communications at ALQST, via a voice message on Signal.

“So those companies and architects have a responsibility when they do business on bloodied soil without establishing the conditions to uphold human rights”.

In a comment in the architecture magazine Deezen, author and urbanist Adam Greenfield shares the same opinion:

“There is no other way about it: If you accept money to work on any aspect of the Neom project, know that you are complicit in these acts of violence,” writes Adam Greenfield.

We have presented this criticism to BIG, but it has also gone without receiving a response.

In Neom, everything and everyone will be connected to the Internet and will be constantly monitored by artificial intelligence.

Drink alcohol or go to jail.

10,000 kilometers away from Denmark, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province, this is a choice that many Uyghurs have been facing since the 2010s.

This pressure comes from the Chinese government, who over the past decade has thrown Muslim people into internment camps, subjected them to forced sterilization and mass surveillance due to their culture and faith.

Leaks and testimonies show that alcohol has played an important role: If you drink alcohol, you go free; if you choose Islam and say no thanks, you may pay the price.

For roughly the same amount of time, from 2015 onwards, Danish brewing giant Carlsberg has been operating in the same province producing the local beer, Wusu Beer.

An operation that experts believe the Chinese government has used to suppress the approximately 12 million population of Uyghurs living in Xinjiang.

This is based on extensive research of the open Chinese media, leaked documents and testimonies from Uyghur refugees, conducted by Danwatch in cooperation with TV2.

It is the equivalent of a Danish butcher filming a bacon commercial with Orthodox Jews dancing and chewing pork in Israel.
Rune Steenberg
Postdoc Palacký University Olomouc 

In particular, experts are criticizing Carlsberg’s sponsorship of a beer festival in a province where alcohol is used as a means to establish whether someone is a radical fundamentalist or not.

“Carlsberg is aiding the Chinese government with their repression in Xinjiang,” says Rune Steenberg, one of Europe’s leading Uyghur researchers, who has lived, researched and conducted anthropological fieldwork in Xinjiang.

Carlsberg declined to be interviewed. In an email response, Carlsberg’s communications director wrote that Wusu’s role is “limited to sponsorship, including tastings, advertising and the sale of beer during the festival”.

Carlsberg’s communications director also stated that there is no evidence that their sponsorship of the beer festival is “suppressing the indigenous Uyghur culture”.

Wusu Beer festival

For the past eight years, Carlsberg has owned five breweries in the Xinjiang province, which is considered one of the most controversial and cut-off places in the world.

One of the breweries is located in Wusu town, which hosts the annual Wusu Beer Festival.

In the programs and photographs online that Danwatch and TV2 sourced, the festival resembles one in Denmark: Concerts with popular musicians and parades through the city.

All baring the Wusu Beer logo.

But as with everything else in Xinjiang, this kind of festival must be seen in the context in which it is held, explains anthropologist Adrian Zenz, who helped leak the “Xinjiang Police Files,” which revealed the Chinese state’s repression of the province’s Uyghur people.

“An activity like a beer festival is designed to pull people away from their religion, rules and way of life”, says Adrian Zenz.

What is also problematic is that the festival mixes traditional Uyghur dance and costume, originating from a Muslim tradition in which alcohol is forbidden, with beer, explains Rune Steenberg.

“It is provocative and disrespectful”, says Rune Steenberg.

“It is the equivalent of a Danish butcher filming a bacon commercial with Orthodox Jews dancing and chewing pork in Israel”.

To understand this, you need to understand what is happening in Xinjiang.

More than one million Uyghurs have been interned in Xinjiang.

Repression in Xinjiang

In recent years, reports of the repression of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang have become widespread.

Especially from 2017 onwards, reports and leaks have confirmed the systematic persecution of the Uyghur people in particular, who make up around 45 percent of the population in the province.

Most central to Beijing’s approach has been the creation of hundreds of detention camps, where it is likely that up to a million people have been incarcerated.

According to several accounts, they have been subjected to torture, rape, forced sterilization and indoctrination to the ‘correct Chinese mindset’.

Internment has meant that families have been split up, and Uyghur children have been sent to Chinese orphanages where they are taught to love their Chinese homeland and its government.

Thousands of mosques and religious symbols have been demolished, and the Chinese government is closely monitoring the inhabitants of Xinjiang.

What they do, where they are and who they associate with.

Director of the organization Nomogaia, Kendyl Salcito, who co-authored two reports on Western business relations in Xinjiang, calls China’s treatment of Uyghurs “a silent annihilation”.

“I think it’s important for people to understand that the type of repression that is going on in Xinjiang is not of the type that we saw during the Srebrenica massacre or the genocide in Rwanda. This is not a sudden outbreak of violence. This is a slow, systematic, deliberate cleansing of culture and people”, says Kendyl Salcito.

The US, several governments and NGOs share this view and have called China’s treatment of the Uyghur people a genocide.

In September 2022, the UN involved itself and after much rigmarole, they concluded that China has committed human rights violations so serious that they amount to crimes against humanity.

Religious extremism

China has maintained that all accusations are “the lie of the century”.

Instead, the Communist Party says, it is fighting religious extremism and poverty in the predominantly Muslim province.

In practice, this has led to effectively outlawing the Muslim culture and lifestyle in a province where more than half of its population is devoted to Islam, explains Adrian Zenz.

“If Islam says that you can’t drink alcohol or eat pork, then the state will make people do exactly that under the guise of fighting religious extremism”, says Adrian Zenz.

According to Adrian Zenz, the consequence is that Uyghurs now live with the risk of being sent to an internment camp if they refuse to participate in events that the state expects them to.

“They know they can be labeled as religious extremists. That’s how the system works. It’s a police state”, says Adrian Zenz.

175 jailed for not drinking alcohol

Leaked documents, the testimonies of escaped Uyghurs and the Chinese media confirm the same story: Uyghurs have been widely detained or thrown into prison for growing a slightly too long beard, for praying, for fasting, and even: for not wanting to drink alcohol.

Alcohol has played a major role in China’s criminalization of Islam in Xinjiang, says anthropologist Rune Steenberg.

“Alcohol has undoubtedly been an active tool in the oppression of the Uyghurs. Especially in creating an environment where people have not been able to remain Uyghur in any strong expression without being labeled as an Islamist or radical fundamentalist”, says Rune Steenberg

An excerpt from a leaked dataset of people detained from the early 2010s up to 2018 in the Konasheher area of Xinjiang, which Danwatch and TV2 were given exclusive access to by Adrian Zenz, illustrates the role of alcohol in the province.

The dataset, which covers only a fraction of all detainees in Xinjiang, shows that 175 people were in detention camps on the grounds that, among other things, they did not drink alcohol.

One of them was Memeteli Turghur, who was detained because he did not smoke or drink, according to the dataset.

Below are 10 people who have been imprisoned for refusing to drink alcohol.

10 people imprisoned for refusing to drink alcohol

Up to one million people are believed to have been incarcerated in the Xinjiang internment camps. Some of them for not drinking alcohol. Read about some of them here:

1

Erkrem RoziAmong other accusations: “He has not sold cigarettes or alcohol since he opened his business. In June 2016, the authorities ensured that cigarettes and alcohol were sold in the shop. He protested.”

2

Memeteli Turghun“Category 5: Religious extremism, attends the mosque’s five daily prayers, does not smoke or drink, listens to recordings of religious material illegally”.

3

Ahmet BextiAmongother accusations: “Listened to Aniwar Kasim’s lecture on ‘No smoking, no drinking’ in the summer of 2013.”

4

Razigül A.Among other accusations: “listened to Aniwar Kasmus’s speech on “those who drink and smoke at home and cook are not halal. The prayers of those who smoke and drink will not be answered.”

5

Memet Tursun IslamAmongother accusations: “Video on his phone about “halal and non-halal: smoking and alcohol are not halal”.

6

Yasinjan MahmutAmong other accusations: “listened to Pa and Reding’s lecture on not drinking, not smoking.”

7

Abdurehim BawudinAmong other accusations: “From 2000 to 2016, he was the “prayer caller” for the mosque in the fifth division of the former 13 villages. He didn’t drink or smoke.”

8

Alimjan KasimAmong other accusations “Strong religious environment, has extremist thoughts, will not meet people who smoke and drink or avoids them.”

9

W. EliAmong other accusations: “Has religious extremist ideas, does not smoke, does not drink, prays five times a day.”

10

Elijan MemetAmong other accusations: “held religious extremist views, used to drink, smoke and gamble, suddenly stopped drinking and smoking in 2014.”

Source: Xinjiang Police Files and exclusive dataset from Adrian Zenz

Eyewitness: “They looked really scared”

Uyghur children’s author Abduweli Ayup has also seen alcohol used against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Danwatch and TV2 visited him in the Norwegian city of Bergen to discuss what he witnessed on a summer day back in 2015 in a suburb of Kashgar, located in Xinjiang.

In the middle of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during the day – 20 people had lined up in a horseshoe to take part in a drinking competition.

“What’s going on here, I thought. Normally you wouldn’t see people eating on the street during Ramadan and it is inconceivable that people would drink alcohol in public”, says Abduweli Ayup about the incident.

It was not long before he realized what was actually happening. The competition, he says, was organized by official ombudsmen and the military, and the participants were mainly from the minority: Uyghurs like himself.

At the end of the horseshoe was a Chinese woman with a megaphone, uttering words of encouragement to the drinking crowd.

“You are brave, you are defying religious extremism”, echoes Abduweli Ayup.

Behind the woman were paramilitaries and police officers with weapons, and Abduweli Ayup could sense that the men drinking felt threatened and coerced.

“They looked really scared. Many tried to hide their faces, and some of them could hardly hold their glass properly because their hands were shaking so much. It looked like they were torturing themselves,” Abuweli Ayup told Danwatch and TV2.

“It wasn’t like they were drinking beer, but poison”.

A similar session was reported in Xinjiang during the same summer, and several videos online show allegedly similar instances in the province.

According to Abduweli Ayup, the videos are similar to what he witnessed.

He also said that the beer they were drinking was Wusu Beer.

Sell alcohol or close your business

The dataset of the detained Uyghurs, which Danwatch and TV2 have access to, shows that people have been imprisoned because they would not sell alcohol or cigarettes in their shops.

In 2015, Berlingske newspaper reported a similar practice.

In the small town of Aktesh, the Communist Party had launched a campaign to “weaken Islam”, an unnamed local party secretary told Berlingske.

According to the newspaper, this campaign dictated that shopkeepers in the village were now required to stock at least five different brands of alcohol and cigarettes or risk “the closure of their shop, having their business suspended and facing legal action”.

Experts: Carlsberg must have known

In 2015, the same year that the Chinese government ran its ‘sell alcohol’ campaign in Aktesh, Carlsberg bought full ownership of the Wusu Beer brand in Xinjiang. In a report on Chinese state television, a journalist states that Wusu has 85 percent of the market in the province.

Carlsberg has been critizised for being present and doing business at a time when the stranglehold on Muslim minorities intensified.

According to Adrian Zenz and Rune Steenberg, Carlsberg and Wusu Beer must have been aware of the state pressure to drink alcohol.

“They know that there are many Uyghur shops and restaurants that did not sell alcohol until seven years ago. Wusu is one of the beers that has been forced into Uyghur businesses. And because so many businesses have been forced to sell alcohol, we can assume that Carlsberg has profited from this,” says Rune Steenberg.

Adrian Zenz believes there is a possibility that prior to 2019, Carlsberg may not have been aware of how their beer was used by the Chinese authorities.

But after then, it must have been obvious to them:

“In 2023, all companies are very aware of the situation in Xinjiang and that it is impossible to distinguish between coercion and non-coercion in the province”, says Adrian Zenz.

Carlsberg’s billion-dollar business in Xinjiang: 

  • In 2004, Carlsberg acquired a 34.5 percent stake in Xinjiang Wusu Brewery Co., Ltd.
  • In 2009, they increased to 63.5 percent
  • In 2015, they took full ownership
  • It is unclear how successful Wusu is as a business.
  • In a report on Chinese state TV, the journalist says that Wusu has 85 percent of the market in Xinjiang.
  • Carlsberg informed Danwatch and TV2 that they never report figures at market level. Berlingske has previously reported that Carlsberg has indicated that Wusu in 2020 accounted for a quarter of the total Chinese business with a turnover of 9.9 billion Danish krone.
  • Carlsberg told Danwatch that in 2020 they restructured their activities in China, which meant that “our Chinese activities (including Wusu) were transferred to the listed company Chongqing. As a result, we have since been limited in what we can say about China as we have to comply with the laws and regulations in all countries”.

No conclusive answers

Danwatch and TV2 asked Carlsberg how they felt about having such a large market share in a province where Muslims are sanctioned for not drinking alcohol.

We also asked them how they felt about that, according to an eyewitness, their beer has been used for what Abduweli Ayup considers to be involuntary drinking.

Carlsberg did not provide specific answers to these questions.

Carlsberg’s communications director writes – in general – TV 2 and Danwatch have not provided “any facts or evidence to support these allegations”.

“None of these accounts contain any evidence of specific actions allegedly taken by our local company. Since we received this request, we have thoroughly investigated all allegations and we have not found any evidence to support the claims”, it reads.

Carlsberg’s communications director also writes that they take human rights very seriously.

“Carlsberg is committed to respecting internationally recognized human rights wherever we operate in the world.Therefore, we have a comprehensive human rights policy that explicitly prohibits the use of any form of forced or compulsory labour in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)”, writes Carlsberg’s Director of Communications.

Impossible to know if they are there voluntarily

The question of coercion or non-coercion is crucial to understanding what is going on in the otherwise closed province, both researchers point out.

Although Beijing announced back in 2019 that all detainees had now been “re-educated”, Telegraph investigations, interviews with former prisoners and police leaks show that many of them were simply sent on to another prison, house arrest or into forced labour.

There are also reports that camps still exist in remote locations, while surveillance of Uyghurs has intensified.

Abduweli Ayup is familiar with this kind of surveillance. After 2014, he found that surveillance cameras were absolutely here, there and everywhere.

“They could see who you were, your demeanor and where you were going,” says Abduweli Ayup.

The latent threat of imprisonment and constant surveillance means, according to the researchers, that it is no longer possible to distinguish who participates voluntarily in public events or not. This applies to the summer day in 2015 in the suburb of Kashgar, where Abduweli Ayup saw Muslims drinking Wusu beer in the middle of Ramadan.

From the fear of getting into trouble, he did not ask these men why they were drinking, but he is convinced they did not do it voluntarily.

Rune Steenberg believes that this is the most likely scenario, as drinking in public spaces used to be associated with social exclusion.

“Those who wanted to drink did it in secret”, says Rune Steenberg,

But, he adds, this does not mean that they have been directly threatened to drink.

“Some may have chosen to participate to be seen in a better light by the authorities. It could lead to promotion. Either way, I would assume that they don’t like drinking in public”, explains Rune Steenberg.

TV 2 and Danwatch have not found any evidence to suggest that Carlsberg and Wusu were aware of the kind of events that Abduweli Ayup witnessed in 2015.

“Carlsberg supports repression”

On the other hand, says Rune Steenberg, Carlsberg should know how their beer could be used at the large beer festival in Wusu.

Now, “The repression is so well known that it must be obvious that the authorities are recording who is participating and that it is impossible to know who is participating voluntarily”, says Rune Steenberg.

Therefore, he also believes that Carlsberg is aiding China’s repression of the Uyghurs.

He points out that Carlsberg’s Wusu beer is everywhere in Uyghur shops that were never before willing to sell alcohol, that their beer is used in public drinking events like the one witnessed by Abduweli Ayup, and that they sponsor a beer festival that many locals oppose but are forced to attend for fear of imprisonment.

“Consequently, Wusu and Carlsberg are deliberately creating an environment where human rights violations take place”, says Rune Steenberg,

Carlsberg has not responded to the accusation that the Wusu beer festival is cultivating an environment where human rights violations take place.

Wusu Beer holds 85 percent of the market in Xinjiang.

Freedom is better than sunshine

In Bergen, outside the window snow is falling. It is cold, the sky is grey, and so too is Abduweli Ayup’s relationship to Carlsberg.

“I am really disappointed because Denmark is my neighbour. Countries in Europe and Scandinavia always talk about the environment and human rights, but a thousand kilometers away Carlsberg is aiding the oppression of the Uyghur people,” says Abduweli Ayup.

He turns his gaze to the window and looks out at the snow-covered landscape. The weather in Norway is good, he says. The sun does not shine so much but it’s okay.

“I come from a place where there is a lot of sunshine, but no freedom”, says Abduweli Ayup.

“Now, I have almost no sun, but I have freedom. Sometimes you have more of one thing and less of another. I have freedom”.

“The supervisor shouts at me all the time, calls me horrible names and complains about me to the boss. She says that I am not fast enough”.

The large man sitting opposite us shrinks as he tells about daily life on one of Italy’s largest kiwi orchards. Tears roll down his sunburned cheeks.

“She films me on her phone and sends the footage to the boss if I just get my water bottle or stop for a moment to get some dirt out of my eye. Then I won’t get paid that day’.

The broken man on the rickety café chair on the edge of the central square of the Cisterna di Latina, just south of Rome, is Gurjinder Singh.

How we did it

Get an insight into the methods used in this study and the data obtained here.

After fourteen years as a farm worker in Italy’s scorched kiwi fields, he is a changed man.

The last three years in particular have cost him both his health and his equilibrium.

Shortly before Danwatch met Gurjinder Singh, he had managed to escape from a large kiwi orchard in Lazio. Where he was subjected to constant harassment and surveillance.

Although he has moved on, 50-year-old Gurjinder Singh, is reluctant to give his real name.

He also dares not let us publish the name of the orchard in fear of what the orchard owner could do to him. For example, get him fired from his new workplace.

“My family and children are in India, and they need all the money I can send them”, he says.

In colaboration with the Italian center for investigative journalism, IrpiMedia, and independent Indian newspaper The Wire, Danwatch has been in Lazio, south of Rome, to investigate the conditions in the Italian kiwifruit industry.

Midway between the ruins of Rome and the white beaches of the Mediterranean, lies one of Italy’s most fertile agricultural areas, where, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), kiwifruit production has steadily increased over the past twenty years, supplying a great portion of the globe with the juicy fruit.

Italiens kiwi-produktion

Så mange tons kiwi er produceret i Italien fra 2001 til 2021.

But Italy's sweet kiwi success is built on a bitter reality.

Several kiwi workers from orchards across Lazio clearly illustrate how Indian migrant workers from Punjab are subjected to debt slavery, underpayment and exploitation to secure fresh supplies of the small fuzzy fruit for the rest of the world, including Danish supermarkets.

And this picture is confirmed by local trade unions, police authorities and experts interviewed by Danwatch, IrpiMedia and The Wire.

If a migrant worker is trapped in a situation where they cannot afford to quit, due to debt, or because they are controlled by their employer, it is definitely modern slavery.
Natalia Ollus
Senior Researcher and Director of the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, Helsinki

Researchers, NGOs and trade unions estimate that at least 30,000 Indian migrants work in Lazio's orchards, toiling 10-11 hours a day, six days a week, for an hourly wage of around 5-6 euros. This is just over half of the minimum wage.

Most migrant workers in Lazio come from Punjab in northern India.

But to get that far, they typically have to pay between 100,000 and 135,000 euros to get to Italy - a debt that typically takes them between three to four years to repay.

This makes it very difficult to leave the kiwi orchard, no matter how inhumane the conditions are.

Trade unions, NGOs and independent experts on human trafficking say that conditions in the Italian kiwifruit industry can be described as modern slavery in several respects.

"The wage conditions and that workers must put themselves in debt to travel to Italy are both elements of modern slavery," said Sine Plambech, an expert on human trafficking and senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).

"If a migrant worker is trapped in a situation where they cannot afford to quit, due to debt, or because they are controlled by their employer, it is definitely modern slavery," says Natalia Ollus, senior researcher specializing in human trafficking and director for the European Institute of Crime Prevention and Control in Helsinki.

Gurjinder Singh, who spent 15 years working on Italian kiwifruit farms, discloses the exploitation and psychological violence on one of Lazio's large kiwifruit orchards. Photo: Stefania Prandi

Det centrale torv, Cisterna di Latina, Lazio, Italien

A broken man

Gurjinder Singh comes straight from the field to speak with us and apologizes for not being able to clean off the dirt that is ingrained into his hands.

"I scrub them with shampoo and lemon, but I just can't get it off," he says, hiding his hands that look just as wounded as his soul.

Just two days earlier, Gurjinder Singh started a new job in the provincial capital Cisterna di Latina with a different orchard owner, who he hopes will treat him better and keep his promise of an employment contract, an hourly wage of 5-6 euros and an eight-hour working day.

Several of the 50-60 other farm workers there have told him that it is a bearable place. But he is not sure whether or not this is true.

False payslips

As Gurjinder Singh talks about life as a kiwi worker, two of his new colleagues sit next to him and nod. Because his story is their story too.

Ten different kiwi workers revealed to us, with little variation in their stories, how orchard owners systematically manipulate their pay slips and do not pay the agreed minimum wage, which is around nine euros an hour.

The trick is really quite simple, they explain.

Every month, employers record far fewer days and hours on their pay slips than the employees actually work. Instead, part of their hourly wage is paid to them on the side, at a much lower rate and often in cash.

Their average hourly wage then ends up being 5-6 euros per hour - a third less than the wage the orchard owners should have paid them.

And in that way, employers don't have to pay full wages for labour and they don't have to pay a lot of taxes. Giovanni Gioia, president of the La Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) trade union in Lazio, explains.

That he estimates that the scam costs the Italian state billions in lost tax revenue every year, but there are no firm figures.

His office in Latina is plastered with posters baring red slogans and raised fists. He says that payroll fraud is widespread throughout the Italian agricultural sector and that it has been very difficult for the authorities and trade unions to tackle.

In 2016, 5,000 Indian migrant workers took to the streets to draw attention to their exploitation and low pay. Photo: CGIL

"Up to 90% of the payslips we see are fake. For example, orchard owners will claim three days of work per week at 6.5 hours per day, but in reality it is very different. The vast majority of farm workers work six or seven days a week from sun-up to sun-down", says Giovanni Goia.

The many workers we spoke to unanimously confirmed that working hours are typically 11-12 hours a day, six days a week.

Haning in his office in the provincial capital Latina, Giovanni Gioia's pride and joy is a large photograph from 2016 when GCIL motivated thousands of Indian farm workers to take to the streets to protest their conditions.

Since then, on average wages have risen from 3 euros to 5.5 euros. But otherwise, the conditions are pretty much the same, he says.

In the Shaheed Baba Silal Singh temple outside Jalandhar, family members give up to 1,000 model airplanes as offerings every day, praying for their sons, husbands or fathers to be granted visas to work in Europe. Photo: Stefania Prandi

Templet Shaheed Baba Bihal Singh, Talhan, Indien

The dream of Europe

Like Gurjinder Singh, the rest of the Indian farm workers who tend to, water, pick, and pack the juicy kiwis in Lazio come from the Indian state of Punjab.

We went to northern India to visit some of the villages where families send between 400 and 500 sons, husbands and fathers every day to work in the US, Canada and Europe.

Although Punjab is known as India's breadbasket, the economic prosperity of recent decades has not reached the remote villages, and money sent home by migrant workers plays a major role, especially for poor farmers.

It's Sunday in the grand Shaheed Baba Bihal Singh temple in Talhan village outside Jalandhar, Punjab's third largest city.

From all over, turbaned men, women in colorful saris, and families with children flock to the temple to participate in the daily prayer.

Inside, between the temple pillars, several of the children play with the brightly coloured model airplanes they bought at the market outside the temple. 1.70 euros for the smallest, 5.30 for the most expensive.

Most of the airplanes are still wrapped in crackling cellophane, because they're not meant to be played with. The planes are to be given as offerings at the temple to ensure that an older brother, father or uncle can get one of the coveted visas to the West. For the skilled, it's the US and Canada, for the unskilled it's Portugal and Italy.

One by one, the colourful airplanes are piled in front of the flower-covered dais where the temple's priest Baljit Singh is about to preach.

"Every day, visitors give up to 1,000 airplanes as offerings, on Sundays there can be up to 3,000-4,000," he says.

The planes symbolize the dream of travel, the dream of a better life in the USA or Europe. A dream which is shared by almost every child and adult we spoke to in the village.

And it's a dream that many are making a reality: the Indian media estimate that Italy alone is home to more than 220,000 workers from Punjab.

"People see that offering up an airplane works for others. And then they think, why not try it themselves," says the priest.

"Does it work? Yes, of course it works," he says with a smile. "If you offer an airplane with sincere faith in God and in yourself, it will work".

In Punjab's villages, large villas testify to the prosperity of some of the families who have sent their sons and daughters to the West. One villa is known as Italy waleya di Kothi, "The House of those who live in Italy", another as England Wale "The Englanders".

But Baljit Singh knows that not all dreams become a reality in Europe.

"I am aware of that. But it has become our culture to travel", he says, while emphasizing that it is a tradition that it saddens him.

"I don't think that those who are doing well here should leave. But there are many young people who have no future here. Even if you are well educated, it is very difficult to find a job. That's why people leave. They hope for a brighter future and better quality of life," he says.

In Jalandhar's maze of narrow streets, hundreds of travel agencies offer their help to obtain visas and work in Italy and elsewhere. Photo: Stefania Prandi

17,000 euros for a visa

Jalandhar, Punjab, Indien

But it's one thing to offer model airplanes at the temple, it's quite another to leave.

And most people will need a little more practical help than what the priest can offer.

In the provincial capital of Jalandhar, home to around one and a half million people, travel agents in their hundreds advertise trips to Europe with a promise of a job and a bright future.

We got in contact with five travel agencies to see what they charge for sending a young man to Italy.

We tell the travel agents that we would like to buy a flight for the journalist's brother, Manjit Singh, and ask them how much it would cost to fly him and how it would work if, for example, he wanted to work at an Italian kiwifruit farm.

All five agents are very eager to arrange flights for the journalist's brother, but the prices and practical details of the trip vary dramatically. At one agency, the agent wants at least 13,5 lakh rupees to get a visa to the Schengen area, which includes Italy.

This is equivalent to approximately 17,000 euros.

"If your brother gets a Schengen visa, he can travel freely within that region, including Italy", the agent promises.

Another travel agent wants 8.5 lakh rupees to send Manjit Singh to Malta. This is equivalent to approximately 10,000 euros. How Manjit gets from Malta to Italy would be up to him, the agent explains.

However, none of the travel agencies can promise that Manjit will secure a job if he makes it to Italy.

"He'll have to get one himself when he gets there", they all respond.

Despite the exorbitant price of a visa and airfare to Italy, the Indian government estimates that around 487,000 young people left Punjab to work abroad between 2016 and February 2021.

It is usually a family initiative, often with the eldest son designated to go and secure a prosperous future for the whole family, according to the several families we meet in Punjab. And several of the Indian kiwifruit workers we interviewed in Lazio confirm this too.

Sometimes the worker's extended family manages to raise the money, but otherwise young people borrow money from the richest families in the village or from loan sharks. Often by mortgaging the family's property, they explain.

Gurjinder Singh is stuck in Italy because his family relies on the money he sends home Photo: Stefania Prandi

Cisterna di Latina, Italien

Trapped by debt

For Gurjinder Singh, it cost more than 100,000 euros to reach Italy. A debt that took him almost four years to repay.

In the square in Latina, he says he had no choice. It was his family who decided that he went, even though he already had a wife and four children at the time.

Today, almost 16 years later, he still has no choice, he says. Due to COVID-19, he has not been able to see his family for the past three years, and for the thirteen years before that, he had no money to travel home. It has not been possible to verify whether this is true. But now in the spring of 2023, things are looking up for him and he expects to be able to travel to Punjab for a holiday.

However, once his holiday is over, the Italian kiwi orchards will call to him once more, he says.

"I have to return to Italy. I come from a very poor family. My three oldest children are married now, but I still have my wife and an 18-year-old son who lives at home and is dependent on my income", he says.

Modern slavery is no longer about being chained and forced against one's will, in the manner of the transatlantic slave trade. Today, it concerns vulnerable people who have, for example, gotten into debt and cannot leave their jobs, even if they are being exploited.
Sine Plambech
Senior Researcher, DIIS

Today Gurjinder Singh is debt-free, but all the Indian workers we spoke to in Lazio and Punjab said they had to pay between 14,000 and 18,000 euros to get to Italy.

And no matter where the money comes from, the obligation to pay back their debt is the same, they say.

  • According to the International Labor organization (ILO), modern slavery or forced labour is understood as work performed involuntarily and under threat of any punishment.
  • It refers to situations where people are forced to work through:
    • the use of violence or intimidation, or by
    • more subtle means such as manipulated debt,
    • withholding identity documents; or
    • threats of sending their termination to the immigration authorities
Source: UN and International Labor Organization ILO

Otherwise, the worker's family back home in Punjab risks paying back extortionate interest to a moneylender, or if things go terribly wrong, they risk losing their home and land. And on top of that, it is also a matter of honour to pay back debt.

Like Gurjinder Singh, all the Indian kiwifruit workers we met spent between three and four years paying off the loans they took to get to Italy.

This has prompted trade unionists like Giovanni Goia and human trafficking experts to talk about debt slavery.

"Modern slavery is no longer about being chained and forced against one's will, in the manner of the transatlantic slave trade. Today, it concerns vulnerable people who have, for example, gotten into debt and cannot leave their job, even if they are being exploited", says Sine Plambech, Senior Researcher at DIIS.

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Six years a slave

Someone who experienced an extreme form of modern slavery is Balbir Nikah Singh, now 49, whom we meet while in the provincial capital of Cisterna di Latina.

Today he lives in a single room annex with a kitchen and bathroom in Latina. But he has never had it so good. For more than six years, he admits he was a "slave" on a farm near the small coastal town of Borgo Sabotino.

When his long days as a farm worker were over, Balbir Singh lived in an old caravan with no light, heat, water or gas.

"If I wanted to bathe, I had to use the hose we had in the barn - the same one I used for the cows. And if I was hungry, I had to rummage through the family's garbage bin or eat the leftover food they fed to the farmyard chickens and pigs," says Balbir Nikah Singh.

His story is varified by several other sources who have had similar experiences, as well as a number of court documents and photos which Danwatch have viewed.

But worst of all, the salary that would have secured his own stay in Italy and enabled him to bring his wife Surinder Kaur and their two daughters to Europe became less and less.

"I dreamed of a bright future for me and my family. My wife was supposed to come to Italy too, but that dream was crushed by my employer", says Balbir Singh

"I worked 12-13 hours every single day, seven days a week. I never had a day off and the salary I received was getting smaller and smaller. Some months I only got 50 or 100 euros. In the end, there were months when I didn't get paid at all".

To this day, the former primary school teacher from Punjab is ashamed that he put up with those conditions. But the farm owner had taken his passport. And without a valid residence permit, he could not travel anywhere.

"Where would I go without a passport and papers. And what's more, the son in the house threatened to kill me if I tried to run away".

Fortunately, Balbir Nikah Singh eventually managed to escape.

Before dawn on the morning of March 17, 2017, the Italian police, the carabinieri, stormed the farm in Borgo Sabotino arresting the entire family and freeing Balbir Singh.

Balbir Nikah Singh was a primary school teacher before becoming a kiwifruit worker in Italy. Today, he lives in a small apartment in Lazio, more than 5,000 kilometers from his wife and their two daughters Photo: Stefania Prandi

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An extreme case - a widespread problem

Today, Balbir Singh is still a farm worker, but now on a kiwi orchard, where despite everything conditions are better. The working days are still many and long, and hourly wages do not exceed 5.50 euros.

But he is the first migrant worker in Italy's history to be granted a permanent residence permit because of what he has endured.

And he is one of the first Indian migrant workers ever to take his former employer to court, both to seek justice for the humiliation he suffered and to raise awareness of the plight of migrants.

"I really hope that even my worst enemy will never have to go through what I have been through", he says.

In addition, he also hopes that his former employer will be forced to pay him back for all months that they did not pay his wages.

"Today, I am a free bird and I am not giving up", he declares. "Your mother gives you the gift of life, but what you achieve with your life depends solely on your personality and your own actions".

Parco Europa, Aprilia, Italien

Systematic exploitation

Although Balbir Nikah Singh's fate led him down an extreme path, his experience shows how vulnerable Indian migrants are when they end up on an Italian orchard, often without knowing the language or their rights.

Marco Omizzollo, Professor of Social Anthropology and Migration at La Sapienza University in Rome, specializes in the conditions of Indian migrants in Lazio.

As well as researching this field, he has worked undercover in the area.

The exploitation of Indian migrant workers is severe and widespread. Agricultural workers are the main victims of exploitation, but many of them are also victims of modern human trafficking.
Marco Omizzollo
Professor, La Sapienza University, Rome

For three months, he lived and worked with the Indian migrant workers in the village of Bella Farnia, south of Latina, and has since published several books about his experiences and the system of travel agents, orchard owners and others who make money from exploiting the poor workers from Punjab.

This has made him quite unpopular and, after a series of threats from who he refers to as the 'Italian agricultural mafia', he now lives and works at a secret address.

Therefore, our meeting with him takes place in Parco Europa in Aprila, one of the smaller towns in the area.

"The exploitation of Indian migrant workers is severe and widespread. It is mainly agricultural workers who are exploited, but many of them are also victims of modern human trafficking", says the Italian researcher.

"They are lured to Lazio by people who make large sums of money to bring them to the area, and most of the time the workers only get a fraction of what they have been promised", he says.

In addition, many of the Indian workers in Lazio are subjected to both physical and psychological violence, his research shows.

However, it is not only in the kiwifruit industry or in Lazio province that the exploitation of guest workers takes place.

According to Urmila Bhoola, the UN Special Rapporteur on modern slavery, up to 400,000 agricultural workers in Italy are at risk of exploitation.

This is according to a comprehensive report she prepared for the UN Human Rights Council on the issue. She also concludes that almost 100,000 live in what she describes as "inhumane conditions".

Breakdown of the Mafia's power

Marco Omizzolo has been involved in migrant workers' rights for more than a decade and was knighted in 2019 for his "courageous work" in exposing working conditions in Lazio.

He believes that conditions have improved slightly in recent years, particularly in terms of pay. But at the same time, the exploitation of workers has become more sophisticated.

"For example, some orchard owners pay yo-yo wages, a term describing an employer who pays wages in full but requires their workers to withdraw 200-300 euros the next day and return it to them in cash".

As CGIL union leader Giovanni Goia confirms, orchard owners have been adept at adapting to increasing controls and making areas of their exploitation invisible.

However, he agrees with Omizzolo that conditions have slightly improved in recent years.

The search for those responsible

After interviewing the ten Indian kiwi workers about the conditions they work under, the

IrpiMedia, The Wire and Danwatch were eager to talk to some of the orchard owners who have been accused of underpaying workers, manipulating their pay slips, verbally abusing them, shaming them and in some cases filming and firing the Indian employees.

However, despite several attempts, it was not possible to get in touch with the owners or to even get a tour of the orchards.

"Call a different number". "Call again" "Come again another day". "The owner's not home".

"There's no one else who can talk to you" is their answer, when we call and, in many cases also when we go to the address to speak with them.

However, according to the UN Principles on Human Rights and Business, responsibility does not end there. According to the guidelines, all companies in the supply chain are jointly responsible for any negative impacts on human rights and the environment.

The next step in the supply chain are a series of Italian wholesalers who buy kiwifruit from the many orchards in Lazio and export them to the rest of the world.

The workers we spoke to are employed on kiwi orchards who, among others, supply Apofruit, Kiwi Pontino, Salvi, Zani Granfrutta and Zeolifruit. All of whom supply kiwifruit to Danish supermarkets.

However, none of these five companies wanted to be interviewed.

THE FACTS

The kiwifruit's route to Denmark

According to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), every link in the supply chain is responsible for what goes on in Italian orchards. Below the diagram, you can read the full reactions of the individual wholesalers and Danish supermarket chains selling kiwifruit from Lazio.

We are in close contact with our kiwifruit suppliers and we have assessed Italy as a medium-risk country in terms of human rights and labour rights violations.

We also know where the kiwifruit is produced, including their subcontractors, but as Danwatch has not disclosed which production sites are involved, it is difficult to assess whether we are getting goods from those sites you have investigated.

We have not found any infringements, and our supplier certainly does not believe that there have been any infringements in his supply chain.

As our kiwifruit suppliers are GRASP certified (together with SA8000 and our signed Codes of Conduct), we also have confidence that working conditions are in order.

We would appreciate to know the production sites where you have found modern slavery, forced labour and human rights violations, so that we know if we are affected and can take immediate action.

We take note of Danwatch's observations from the area and we will continue to work with the limited information they have made available to us. In addition, we have organized a joint meeting facilitated by the Danish Ethical Trade Initiative Denmark for further discussion on the topic.

We are aware that throughout Europe, and particularly in southern European countries, migrant workers are used in the agricultural sector. This is one of the reasons why we at Salling Group require additional documentation from our fruit and vegetable growers as part of our due diligence.

We take your findings very seriously and have looked deeper into our supply chain. However, our third-party verifications/certifications do not allow us to immediately acknowledge these issues.

As Danwatch is not in a position to share more specific information, it is currently only possible for us to comment on general risks.

We are in continuous dialogue with our suppliers, and all our producers are also subject to social audit documentation requirements, and as mentioned above, no deviations of this nature have been observed.

Although we ourselves do not have any indications of these types of unacceptable circumstances, we will investigate the matter further in light of your request.

All Lidl producers of fresh produce must complete the GLOBALG.A.P. GRASP social declaration. Lidl's mandatory requirement is that the evaluation must be completed successfully, i.e. passed as "fully compliant".

As a general rule, Lidl has a zero-tolerance policy towards any kind of human rights violations in our supply chains.

In our business activities, we take responsibility and respect the fundamental rights of all people at different stages throughout our supply chains.

We comply with Lidl's due diligence process and are committed to improving working conditions and strengthening human rights within the framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)

We have demonstrated our commitment to respecting human rights by joining the United Nations Global Compact (UNCG).

For more information, see our purchasing policy regarding Human rights in the supply chain. Our commitment to implementing social and environmental standards in the supply chain is anchored in our Code of Conduct, which is one of our legally binding agreements and applies to our entire supply chain.

Good working conditions across our supply chain are an absolute priority, and we only work with suppliers that comply with Lidl's strict Code of Conduct. We have also published a comprehensive company due diligence statement on our website. As part of our corporate responsibility, we continuously and systematically investigate potential risks such as human rights abuses in supply chains.

If we receive specific facts about breaches of our rules, we will investigate the matter and take appropriate action.

To detect infringements, Lidl has set up an online reporting system to report information. All information received in this way is processed by our Compliance Officer.

The internet-based application can be accessed from any internet-enabled device. We encourage Danwatch to share any specific suspicions or facts from your investigation via our reporting system. Information can also be provided anonymously. This is important in order for us to pursue the specific allegations.

….

  • Danwatch has requested further information about the hotline and whether Lidl has received complaints about conditions in Italy:

To enable compliance breaches to be reported and to address possible violations, Lidl works with its own online reporting system BKMS.

All notifications received are processed. Our online reporting system BKMS can be found and used via the Lidl Compliance website linked below and is available internationally and in several languages. There is also a direct link to our supplier rules at the bottom of Lidl's national websites...

The internal treatment of compliance breaches is carried out in accordance with our published rules of procedure. You can find further information on Compliance at Lidl, including the Rules of Procedure and our online reporting system BKMS, on the following website: https://info.lidl/en/compliance

We have been using BKMS for several years. Based on the several years we have used this reporting system, we can summarize that the system is accepted and used. We receive regular reports via BKMS.

To date, we have not received any complaints about kiwi suppliers or orchards in Italy.

In order to identify breaches of compliance and to be able to take action, it is important that these breaches are reported. We encourage those who have the knowledge of or are affected by, any human rights violations or problematic working conditions, as well as environmental risks and violations, or criminal and administrative offenses in our supply chains to report these using our reporting system BKMS. We would like to stress again that anonymous tips can also be submitted through the system.

We are very concerned about the allegations you have outlined.

Zespri takes claims like this extremely seriously. As we noted in our recent correspondence, we have more than 1,000 growers in Italy, so it would be very helpful if you could provide the evidence and information you refer to so that we can investigate this properly, gather information and take appropriate action. This will also help us give you an on-the-record response to your story.

As you have noticed, we are committed to working to ensure that our industry is one that people want to work in because they are valued, secure and supported in their jobs. We remain committed to doing all we can do to combat the exploitation of workers and to create an industry where people can thrive.

Zespri is committed to looking after people and has a set of core values that must be adhered to in order to protect people working in the kiwifruit industry.

All our producers are obliged to meet the requirements of our definition of agricultural practices. It is the basis for all our orchard activities.

All producers must have a GLOBALG.A.P GRASP (GLOBALG.A.P Risk Assessment of Social Practices) certificate before they can supply to Zespri. It is an internationally recognized independent certification system in the fruit and vegetable industry that outlines expectations for the safety, health and welfare of workers.

Zespri works with more than 1,000 growers in Italy, all of whom must have a GLOBALG.A.P GRASP certificate.

Once the harvest is over, the companies that supply kiwifruit to Zespri are registered with Sedex - one of the world's leading ethical trade membership organizations focused on improving working conditions in global supply chains.

Through Sedex, Italian suppliers of SunGold Kiwis are audited by an external third-party certification body and annually confirm their acceptance of the Zespri Code of Conduct.

The vast majority of employers in the kiwifruit industry take proper care of their people, but there may be a small minority who do not.

Any exploitation of workers is unacceptable and we are committed to holding those involved accountable and continuing to improve our control mechanisms to ensure compliance.

We take the allegations made by DanWatch extremely seriously and have launched an investigation into this, including how we can best support affected workers.

Any manufacturer suspected of not meeting the GlobalGAP GRASP requirements will be investigated by an independent certification body, who have the power to revoke certification,which means that they will not be able to supply Zespri.

People who choose to work in our industry are a critical part of our success. We will continue to review our control mechanisms and work with authorities to combat worker exploitation and create an industry where people are valued, supported and secure in their jobs.

  • Why do you only supervise suppliers of yellow kiwifruit?

All growers supplying Zespri with either Green or SunGold Kiwifruit must be independently certified to GLOBALG.AP and GRASP. GLOBALG.AP is an internationally recognized independent certification standard for good agricultural practices in the fruit and vegetable industry which defines the expectations for worker health, safety and welfare. Before certification, each grower is assessed annually by the independent certification body, including an on-site visit. This means that over 1,200 producer assessments are carried out annually.

SunGold Kiwifruit suppliers have long-term contracts with Zespri and are also committed to being independently audited for Sedex - one of the world's leading ethical trade membership organizations focused on improving working conditions in global supply chains.

In addition to growers being independently certified to GLOBALG.AP and GRASP, green kiwifruit suppliers must provide a declaration that they are Sedex compliant and sign the Zespris Code of Conduct, which includes a commitment to conduct business legally, responsibly, ethically, with integrity, honestly and transparently. Suppliers who do not meet these requirements cannot supply Zespri.

Workers employed on orchards are employed directly by the producers and each worker is paid independently for the work they do.

The wholesalers do not provide labour to the orchards, they only hire staff for packing activity. Therefore, independent systems are in place - GLOBALG.AP and GRASP for growers and Sedex for packers.

  • What do you do to ensure that other suppliers comply with GRASP standards and the Zespri Code of Conduct?

All producers supplying Zespri with either Green or SunGold Kiwifruit must be independently certified to GLOBALG.AP and GRASP. Compliance with GRASP is independently certified by professional certification bodies in Italy.

We regularly speak to suppliers about the importance of worker welfare and since being made aware of the allegations of malpractice, we have contacted all our Italian suppliers expressing our concerns about the alleged practices and reiterating the requirements around worker welfare as a condition of supplying Zespri.

Zespri has also contacted the independent certification bodies and informed them of the allegations. The lack of detail in the allegations, which we have requested from Danwatch several times, has made it more difficult for them to follow up.

To check compliance with our Code of Conduct, Zespri screens all suppliers through a monitoring tool that highlights red flags such as law breaches, regulatory breaches, negative media coverage or sanctions imposed on suppliers. Any red flags or risks raised are reviewed internally and, where appropriate, followed up with the relevant supplier to ensure that the necessary corrective actions have been taken.

  • Who are the independent bodies that supervise kiwifruit producers on your behalf?

The certification bodies in the Latina area are NSF, Agricert, CSI and Certiquality. Zespri has contacted them to draw their attention to the alleged malpractices.

You have launched an investigation into conditions in the Lazio kiwifruit industry. What exactly have you done and when do you expect a result?

Zespri is committed to looking after people and has a set of core values that must be met to help protect people working within our global supply chain.

We also have experience in taking action to address non-compliance issues. Our main focus is on ensuring that affected workers are safe and can be well supported. While we have regular discussions with our suppliers about our expectations for compliance with our values, since being made aware of the allegations, we have formally contacted all of our suppliers to express our concerns about the reports of poor practices and reinforced our expectations that workers within our supply chain are well looked after.

We have also made it clear that meeting the requirements of GLOBALG.AP GRASP is a requirement for delivering Zespri, and when suppliers fail to do so, we will take action. Zespri has conducted an internal audit to ensure that all key control mechanisms are working effectively, and has contacted the independent certification bodies to encourage them to consider the issues raised by DanWatch.

However, the lack of detail in the allegations, which we have requested from DanWatch on several occasions, has made any further investigation difficult. Improving working conditions will remain a constant focus for us, and this is reflected in a task force that has been established to review global industry compliance programs and consider initiatives and/or improvements to be rolled out in the first half of 2023.

This is part of our ongoing efforts to improve our systems.

- You say you want to support the affected workers. In what way?

Zespri wants to ensure that all employees working within our supply chain are safe and well supported. We want to be able to help affected workers get the support they need, including helping to find legitimate employment opportunities within the industry.

  • What are you doing to identify affected workers?

Zespri works with more than 1,200 growers in Italy and the lack of detail provided to date, despite several requests from Zespri, has made it difficult to investigate this case. Zespri has formally contacted suppliers regarding the concerns raised to seek more information and our local teams are also on the ground in Italy to seek further details and have informed the independent certification bodies.

We encourage anyone with information about labour practices in the Italian kiwifruit industry to contact us via our confidential hotline EthicsPoint - Zespri International, available in Italian as well as other languages.

  • What are you doing to enable affected workers to contact you without risking their jobs and wellbeing?

While there are already systems in place for workers with concerns to contact the independent certification bodies or the secretariat of GLOBALG.AP, Zespri also has a confidential hotline -EthicsPoint - Zespri International. We encourage anyone with information about the practice to contact us via this confidential hotline so that we can consider how best to support the wellbeing of the workers concerned.

  • How do you intend to change your due diligence (risk assessment) in Italy?

Over the last six months, Zespri has started work as part of our commitment to further strengthen industry compliance. This includes a review of the due diligence processes currently in place as well as the establishment of a task force to review global industry compliance programs and identify initiatives and/or improvements to be rolled out in the first half of this year. We have also passed on the concerns raised directly to the independent certification bodies.

  • Why are you not listed as a Sedex member when they seem to be the ones certifying your suppliers in Italy?

Zespri does not own or manage any facilities in Italy. As a marketing organization, we are not eligible to be registered with Sedex as this is only available for production units. Our SunGold Kiwi suppliers are nevertheless required to be independently audited, with green suppliers having to provide a declaration that they are Sedex.

Any allegations of malpractices occurring in the kiwifruit industry are worrying and we take these allegations extremely seriously. Zespri has contacted independent certification bodies to outline our concerns about the alleged malpractices in the Italian kiwifruit industry, and we will continue to seek further information to support our investigation. We also refer to the processes outlined above.

With regard to the serious allegations you make, these accusations cannot be in relation to the conditions at Kiwi Pontino.

Our staff are treated in full compliance with the rules, but above all we respect them. After all, it is our employees who are responsible for the daily production and they are an important part of our business.

Official authorities regularly check our company, carry out inspections, with which we always cooperate fully.

We also work with trade unions to help our employees. During the pandemic, we organized vaccination days at the company where employees were able to get vaccinated.

We also provide housing for those who request it, and we are constantly working to help with family reunification where possible.

In light of the above, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, we will forward our response to you to the competent authorities who monitor our company on a daily basis, including our production and export activities, so that they can consider how it would be most appropriate to respond to the allegations you have made.

In regard to the inquiries received concerning the conditions of workers employed in kiwifruit cultivation in the province of Latina, we would like to inform you of the following.

Granfrutta Zani is an Agricultural Cooperative Society formed by producer members in many regions of Italy, including the Latina area.

The aim of Granfrutta Zani is to promote the fruit and vegetables produced by our member companies and to make the best use of them.

Granfrutta Zani is therefore its own legal entity that has no responsibility for the conditions on the orchards that supply us.

Granfrutta Zani's responsibility is to market a safe, healthy product that does not harm the consumer.

Nevertheless, we are aware of the ethical, social and environmental issues and problems in supply chains.

As a cooperative, we are directly involved in and have close control over the staff working in our production and storage facilities, and as such we have full responsibility for the working conditions and treatment of our employees.

On the other hand, we require the orchards supplying Granfrutta Zani to sign a production agreement that includes a series of hygienic, sanitary, environmental and ethical-social requirements.

The companies working with Granfrutta Zani sign this supply agreement at their own responsibility, thus guaranteeing their compliance with the ethical-social requirements we impose, which are based on applicable regulations and international codes of conduct such as ILO, ETI and BSCI.

Granfrutta Zani also recommends our suppliers to use the GLOBALGAP GRASP (GLOBALGAP Risk Assessment on Social Practice) certification scheme and promotes certification through training courses, consultancy and through incentives for certified production.

The main objective of this certification scheme is to reduce the main ethical-social risks in production and to demonstrate compliance with good ethical-social practices through certification by third-party bodies.

To achieve this goal, our own staff carry out spot checks on the certified farms (which currently cover more than 80 percent of the production marketed by Granfrutta Zani). Here they inspect contracts, pay slips, the observation of workers' rights, and the working conditions. They conduct regular meetings between worker representatives and their employers, including interviews with workers.

If we find ethical and social problems on farms, we take appropriate measures, which in the most serious cases can lead to the termination of the cooperation agreements between the farm and Granfrutta Zani.

However, we would like to remind you that our checks, like those carried out by external, third-party certification bodies, are spot checks. Our task is not and cannot be to take over the tasks of the Working Environment Authority. We do not have the necessary competences or the money to do so, as we are not a regulatory body.

In recent months, Granfrutta Zani has developed a new Code of Ethics for the company, which is not yet available. The current Code of Ethics is based on the international ETI and ILO standards and is only valid for Granfrutta Zani, its own facilities and employees.

Granfrutta Zani is itself GRASP-certified (as are most of its member farms) and underwent a SMETA ethical, social and safety workplace assessment in 2021; which will be conducted again in 2023.

If you need further information, we are happy to arrange a meeting at our office.

On behalf of the Soc. Agricola Zeolifruit Coop I thank you for including the aforementioned company in your journalistic investigation, but I must inform you that they do not wish to participate at the time being.

This is also considering that the employees referred to in this study do not belong to the company that I represent... although they may be connected through business relationships.

Further to your request for information, we would like to clarify that Apofruit Italia is a first-class agricultural cooperative engaged in the collection, storage, processing and marketing of fresh fruit and vegetables supplied by its producer members.

Our staff work exclusively in the processing industry and are not employed on the field.

All products supplied by our members, including kiwifruit, must meet Good Agricultural Practice requirements and are subject to various certification schemes, including GLOBAL G.A.P GRASP certification.

Our cooperative is not entitled to conduct investigations into working conditions between member companies and its employees, but as we are particularly sensitive to the issue, we request the aforementioned GLOBAL G.A.P GRASP certification, as it is an internationally recognized third-party and independent certification system for the fruit and vegetable sector. It includes labour rights, safety, the health and welfare of workers, and ensuring the ethical development of the entire supply chain involved.

Graphics: Ditte Ahlgren and Johan Seidenfaden

Apofruit denies all responsibility and in short points out that all their suppliers have the GRASP certification, which sets a number of requirements for transparency and working conditions.

Zeolifruit refuses to cooperate and Salvi did not respond to our inquiries at all.

At Zani Granfruttai, however, they were more responsive.

Quality Manager Enrico Foschin responds in an email that they carry out random checks on the 80 percent of their suppliers who are currently GRASP-certified.

"Here we inspect contracts, pay slips, check the respect of workers' rights and working conditions, conduct regular meetings between workers' representatives and employers, including interviews with workers", he writes.

"If we find ethical and social problems on farms, in the most serious cases, this can lead us to terminate the cooperation".

Enrico Foschin does not address the reports of hourly wages of 5-5.6 euros, verbal abuse, falsification of pay slips. Or the issue of migrant workers' indebtedness and their heavy dependence on the orchard owners.

Many Danish and international companies have signed up to various codes of conduct that commit them to avoid a negative impact on the environment and human rights.

The most important being the UN Principles on Human Rights and Business (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.

Both sets of rules describe the company's co-responsibility for what happens throughout the supply chain. For those who supply the company and those who use the company's products.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) are not legally binding, but they are indicative guidelines that apply to all businesses in all countries, regardless of their size and form.

  • According to the UNGPs, all businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights, i.e. they are responsible for assuring that no human rights are violated and to address any negative human rights impacts in which they may be involved.
  • A core principle of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is the duty to conduct a conscientious due diligence process.
  • This means that the company must carry out a risk assessment of whether the company risks adversely affecting human rights and in which ways.
  • The company must have a plan of action to prevent these risks.
  • The company must also follow up, monitor and mitigate any adverse human rights impacts.
  • And then the company must report on its efforts.
Sources: UNGP, OECD

At Kiwi Pontino, however, an unnamed project manager flatly denies that the problems have anything to do with them.

"These allegations cannot relate to the situation at Kiwi Pontino", he writes.

"Our employees are treated in full compliance with the rules, but above all we respect them. After all, it is our employees who are responsible for the daily production and they are an important part of our business".

In addition, Kiwi Pontino underlines that the Italian authorities monitor the company and the company has always cooperated with them, giving the authorities access to all parts of the company.

Maunganui Road, Tauranga, New Zealand

Concern for the conditions

On the other side of the world, near the extinct Maunganui volcano in northern New Zealand, lies the world's largest exporter of kiwifruit, Zespri International.

It is a global company that in recent years has become a major player in kiwifruit production and exports from Italy.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), who collect agricultural statistics from around the world, Italy is currently the world's third largest producer, with an annual production of 420,000 tons of kiwifruit.

And Zespri is playing a key role in this development, explains the company's Head of Communications Yannis Naumann. Every year, Zespri invests in establishing several new kiwifruit orchards, and by 2023, Zespri will be buying and exporting kiwifruit from no less than 1,200 orchards in Italy, which it will sell on to a large number of countries, mainly in Europe, including Denmark.

According to the Zespri's website, the global kiwifruit company is committed to sustainability and its employees. It states, among other things, that Zespri will "work to ensure that all employees are valued, protected and supported in their work".

"We will attract talent and continue to build a thriving workforce amongst our value chain by 2030. Thriving means continually improving social practices in relation to working conditions, pay, health & safety, development, and diversity and inclusion", as stated in the company's sustainability statement.

But how does this relate to debt slavery, underpayment and the exploitation of Indian migrant workers in Italian kiwi fields?

We would have liked to ask Zespris CEO Daniel Mathieson what they, as major players in the Italian market, are doing to ensure decent conditions in the kiwifruit industry.

But Zespri has declined this. Instead, Nick Kirton, Zespri's European head, replied to us by email:

"We take the allegations of exploitation extremely seriously and have launched an investigation into the situation, including how best to support the workers concerned," he wrote.

"Among other things, we have contacted all our Italian suppliers, expressing our concerns about the alleged practices and reiterated the requirements for worker welfare as a condition for supplying Zespri".

Nick Kirton, like the Italian wholesalers, emphasizes that all their suppliers have GAP certification. "And on top of that, Zespri also has a set of core values that all our suppliers have to live up to," he says, adding that the organizations that certify for Zespri in Italy have also been contacted.

"The vast majority of employers in the kiwifruit industry take good care of their people," Nick Kirton points out.

"But there may be a small minority who do not. Any form of worker exploitation is unacceptable and we will ensure that those involved are held accountable and we will continue to improve our control systems to ensure that this does not happen," he says, urging anyone with information about poor labour practices in the Italian kiwifruit industry to contact Zespri via the company's confidential hotline EthicsPoint - Zespri International.

Two out of every three kiwifruit

But the supply chain does not stop with the Italian wholesalers or the major international exporter Zespri.

According to Statistics Denmark, two out of every three Danish kiwifruit come from Italy. In fact, Danish stores import at least 2000 tons of kiwifruit from Italy every year.

With the help of Danish supermarket chains, website searches, social media, promotional magazines, visits to various stores and lists of producers found on the internet, Danwatch, IrpiMedia and The Wire have managed to piece together the kiwifruit supply chain all the way back to Denmark.

We discovered that Lidl, Salling Group, Dagrofa and Rema 1000 all sell kiwifruit originating from Lazio. Together, the four retail groups own the supermarkets Lidl, Netto, Føtex, Bilka, Meny, Spar, MinKøbmand, LetKøb and Rema1000. All of which import kiwifruit from Lazio - either directly from Italian wholesalers or from the major international exporter Zespri.

Despite several requests, none of the four food corporations would agree to be interviewed about the conditions in Lazio's kiwifruit orchards.

Profilvej, Kolding, Danmark og Stiftsbergstraße, Neckarsulm, Tyskland

Lidl referred us to a hotline

At Lidl's Danish head office in Kolding, head of communications, Thomas Sejersen, refuses to divulge who supplies kiwifruit to Lidl, nor does he answer direct questions about the conditions of kiwifruit workers.

However, according to Lidl's international website, Zespri is a kiwifruit supplier for Lidl. And it was from Lidl's central communications department in Neckarsulm in southern Germany that, after many attempts, we finally received a response via email.

Like several of the wholesalers, an unnamed Lidl spokesperson explains that all their fresh produce producers have to fill in a declaration of GAP certification.

"Lidl has a zero-tolerance policy towards any kind of human rights violations in our supply chains", writes the communications department, emphasizing that Lidl is committed to the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights and Business (UNGPs).

In addition, the German-owned chain says it has a whistleblower hotline for complaints, and Lidl promises to investigate all specific reports of violations of its code of conduct.

We asked the communications department if they thought that the Indian kiwifrui workers in Lazio would know that Lidl buys the kiwifruit they pick and if they would see the point in complaining to their hotline.

"We have been using the system for several years and can assure you that the system is accepted and used", Lidl writes. However, to date, Lidl has not received any complaints about kiwifruit suppliers or orchards in Italy.

Marsallé 32, Horsens, Danmark

Rema 1000 washes its hands of the matter

Norwegian-owned Rema 1000, which currently has 363 supermarkets in Denmark, also confirmed that it gets some of its kiwifruit from Lazio.

According to Communications Manager Jonas Schrøder, nine different producers and wholesalers are involved, including Zani, who exports kiwifruit from the Lazio province.

However, in an email response, he writes that Rema 1000 does not recognize the reports of debt slavery, underpayment, wrongful dismissal, verbal abuse or the falsification of pay slips.

"We have not found there to be any violations and our supplier certainly does not believe that there are any violations in his supply chain", Jonas Schrøder writes, but acknowledges that Italy does not have the best reputation when it comes to worker conditions.

"We are in close contact with our kiwifruit suppliers and we have assessed Italy as a medium-risk country in terms of human and labour rights violations," he writes.

"As our kiwifruit suppliers are GRASP certified and have signed our Code of Conduct, we are confident that working conditions are in order".

He does not elaborate on the basis of this trust.

Kærup Industrivej, Ringsted, Danmark

Dagrofa takes the issue on board

The Dagrofa group currently has 511 stores, including 111 Menu supermarkets, 124 Spar supermarkets, 163 Min Købmand supermarkets and 113 LetKøb supermarkets, and it also sources its kiwifruit from Italy, including organic kiwifruit from Lazio.

Dagrofa responds to Danwatch in an email.

However, no upper management members from the large group, which employs more than 13,000 people, are willing to be interviewed about the problems in the Italian kiwifruit sector.

However, Henrik Johannsen, Dagrofa's CSR manager, writes in an email that the group will pursue the matter further.

"We take note of Danwatch's observations from the area and will continue to work with the limited information you have made available to us. Currently, we have arranged a joint meeting facilitated by the Danish Ethical Trade Initiative Denmark for further dialogue", he writes.

Dagrofa would not elaborate on the exact purpose of the meeting or who will be in attendance, but the Danish Ethical Trading Initiative network subsequently has invited Danwatch to the meeting to discuss possible solutions to the working conditions in Italy.

Rosbjergvej, Brabrand, Danmark

Salling Group is investigating the case

Another supermarket chain also buying kiwifruit from Lazio is Salling Group, who operates more than 1,700 stores across the Bilka, Føtex, Netto and Salling chains.

According to Salling Group's website, the group has signed up to the UNGuiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and several other similar guidelines, all of which emphasize the company's commitment to respecting human rights.

Therefore, Danwatch has asked Salling Group what they are doing to ensure good working conditions in kiwifruit production, and what they are doing to rectify the conditions unearthed by our investigation.

"We are aware that throughout Europe, and particularly in Southern European countries, migrant workers are used in the agricultural sector," writes Henrik Vinther Olesen, Deputy Head of Communication and Sustainability.

He assures us that Salling Group takes Danwatch's findings "very seriously" but has not witnessed the conditions we have described.

"We are in continuous dialogue with our suppliers, and all our manufacturers are subject to social audit documentation requirements, and no deviations of this type have been observed," writes Winther Olesen, but promises to investigate the matter further.

Henrik Vinther Olesen does not elaborate on how Salling Group intends to do this.

This article has been produced in collaboration with IrpiMedia and The Wire. The project has received funding from Journalismfund.eu.

The Danish corporation Rockwool continues to retain its businesses in Russia out of fear that Putin’s regime will take over the technology and profit from the company’s four Russian factories.

Now, Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet can reveal that for years, Rockwool has earned millions by selling its products to the very same regime for use in various military projects.

An examination of contracts in the Russian government’s official procurement database shows that Rockwool’s Russian partners have, in at least 21 cases, supplied Rockwool products worth a total of 123 million rubles (approximately 11.5 million kroner) to shipyards carrying out large orders on behalf of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

All contracts were signed after Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, and while the brutal war in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk was raging.

Here is one of the protocols prepared by an official procurement commission in 2017. It clearly shows that it concerns the delivery of Rockwool products to a vessel of project 23120, and that the contract is concluded with the company Marine Complex Systems LLC.


When Rockwool’s products end up on military equipment for the Russian Ministry of Defense, it often happens through Rockwool’s regular partner, Marine Complex Systems LLC (MKS LLC).

MKS LLC describes itself as “the official Rockwool distributor” and boasts of being one of the leading suppliers of insulation for shipbuilding. They are also certified by the Russian intelligence service FSB with permission to work with state secrets.

From open sources, Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have documentation showing that between 2016 and 2019, MKS LLC delivered Rockwool products worth at least 71 million rubles to projects for the Russian Ministry of Defense. This includes over 58,000 square meters of stone wool panels and over 3.5 tons of Rockwool adhesive.

In a contract from September 2017, for example, it appears that one of Rockwool’s Russian distributors, the company Marine Complex Systems LLC, has delivered Rockwool materials to the shipyard Severnaya Verf. Products that, according to the contract, were meant for the construction of the naval ship ‘Vsevolod Bobrov’.

The ship arrived in January 2022 to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in the sea around Crimea – and the following months it played an active role in the bloody battle for the strategically important island of Zmeiny, also known as Snake Island, which Russia invaded on the first day of the 2022 invasion.

“The ship played a very active role in first transporting ammunition and military equipment to Zmeiny Island. Later, the ‘Vsevolod Bobrov’ received a Pantsir-S1 missile system on board to provide support against air attacks, so the ship was not only used for transportation but also in combat,” explains Ukrainian milirary analyst Alexander Kovalenko.

Images from the Crimean naval base in Sevastopol appears to show the Pantsir-S1 missile system on the deck of the ship around that time.

This photo from the Telegram account “Military Information” (Военный Осведомитель) shows a Pantsir-S1 missile system on board the ‘Vsevolod Bobrov’.

Predictable violations

Tara Van Ho, one of the world’s leading experts in human rights and business at Essex Law School in England, has evaluated the documentation – and is particularly critical of Rockwool’s supply to the ship ‘Vsevolod Bobrov’.

“In 2017, Russia was responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law with the two illegal occupations of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Providing their military with equipment for ships, planes, and artillery all entails a risk that the products contribute to international crimes. And in this case with ‘Vsevolod Bobrov’, that risk has materialized,” she explains.

“It matters here whether Rockwool has supplied material for use in a predictable and serious violation of human rights. They have done so, and they should be held accountable”.

Soundproofing the Ministry of Defense

Rockwool’s products have also been used for other projects than those listed in the procurement database. Rockwool in Russia proudly states on social media that in 2007, they supplied materials for the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, and in 2015, they soundproofed the iconic headquarters of the Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow.

In 2015, Rockwool advertised on their VK account that they had soundproofed the iconic headquarters of the Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow (machine-translated from Russian).

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have asked Rockwool a series of questions about the work for the Ministry of Defense, as well as the specific navy projects between 2015 and 2020, including the ship ‘Vsevolod Bobrov’.

Rockwool refuses to participate in an interview. Instead, Michael Zarin, Communications Director of the Rockwool Group, has sent a written response, although he does not address the 21 recent navy projects carried out in the years after 2014:

“Rockwool does not have a customer relationship with the Russian government or other public entities. The examples cited are old and date back to 2007. The situation today is significantly different, and we fully respect the applicable sanctions.”

“In Russia, we no longer produce specific products for this segment,” he says without elaborating further on what that means.

(Read Michael Zarin’s full response at the bottom of the article).

Anti-sabotage ships filled with Rockwool

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have also asked Rockwool about a number of images published by Vympel shipyard showing large quantities of Rockwool being used in the construction of four armed anti-sabotage ships that were handed over to the Russian navy in 2017.

The images have been publicly available on several Russian websites and news media. However, Rockwool does not want to comment on the four specific ships, whether they knew about the project and what they think about their products being used in the production of the ships. Instead, the communications director responds in a general manner:

“In Europe alone, we distribute more than 120 million packages of stone wool annually. Our products are widely available on both the Russian and Ukrainian markets through a wide range of distributors. Therefore, it is also impossible for us to know or have any form of control over who all the end-users are.”

The anti-sabotage ships were showcased to Putin during a naval parade in St. Petersburg, 2017. Source: @admiraltynavyband on Youtube.

Should be further investigated

Rockwool’s four factories in Russia are owned 100 percent by the Rockwool Group in Denmark. Because they are subsidiaries in Russia, they are subject to Russian law and as such not immediately covered by the EU sanctions that were imposed in 2014 after Russia’s invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The sanctions prohibit, among other things, the sale of certain products to the Russian military.

However, the EU also states that there are exceptions. For example, employees with EU citizenship in a Russian subsidiary can be held personally responsible if they are involved in transactions in Russia that violate the sanctions. A parent company can also be held responsible if it actively approves transactions that violate the sanctions.

Tara Van Ho believes that the Danish authorities should investigate the matter with Rockwool to see if there may have been a breach of EU sanctions in connection with deliveries to the Russian military.

“In view of the seriousness of the situation, I think it is important that the public is assured whether Rockwool violated EU sanctions or not. I cannot assess that from the outside, and therefore Danish authorities should investigate it,” she says.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have asked the following questions to Rockwool:

  • We can see that in the spring of 2022 (see attached), the shipyard Kronstadt requested Rockwool products. Did Rockwool deliver this order to Russia directly or through a distributor? Since February 24, 2022, has Rockwool delivered products in Russia either directly or through a distributor, where the order falls under the Russian Ministry of Defense?
  • We can see that since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, distributors have delivered Rockwool products for at least 123 million rubles to orders ultimately issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense. What did Rockwool in Denmark know about these orders?
  • Does Rockwool believe that the deliveries ultimately issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense comply with Rockwool’s own Code of Conduct, including compliance with UNGP?
  • How does Rockwool feel about its products being used in Russia’s military, which has illegally annexed Crimea since 2014 and has repeatedly violated human rights?
  • How many orders ultimately issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense have Rockwool delivered products to, and what was the value of these orders?
  • We can see in a contract (see attached) that Rockwool’s regular partner Marine Complex Systems (ООО «Морские комплексные системы») has delivered Rockwool products to the Severnaya shipyard for Project 23120, ship 881 “Vsevolod Bobrov”. This ship has been actively involved in the current conflict in Ukraine according to Ukrainian and international media, and was involved in an incident in May 2022. What does Rockwool think about a ship in the Russian Navy, which is insulated with Rockwool, playing an active role in the current conflict?
  • Rockwool itself states that it delivered sound insulation to the Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow in 2015 (see attached). Does Rockwool believe that this complies with Rockwool’s own Code of Conduct, including compliance with UNGP?
  • On open Russian websites and on the Vympel Shipyard’s website, several pictures (see attached) show that Rockwool’s products have been used for Project 21980 anti-sabotage boats. Did Rockwool know about this, and what does Rockwool think about this delivery?
  • In an article on Rockwool’s website about 25 years in Russia, it is stated that Rockwool delivered products to the Russian warship, the frigate Admiral Gorshakov, which was built at the Severnaya shipyard in 2007. In 2020, the shipyard’s press office stated that Rockwool was used in the construction of the shipyard’s frigates (link). How many frigates built by the Severnaya shipyard were built with Rockwool products, and how much did Rockwool earn from these orders?
  • In 2019, CEO Jens Birgersson participated in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) (link). Did Jens Birgersson speak with President Putin on that occasion? Has Jens Birgersson met with President Putin on other occasions?

Michael Zarin, Communications Director of the ROCKWOOL Group, responds as follows:

“ROCKWOOL does not have a customer relationship with the Russian government or other public entities. The examples cited are old and date back as far as 2007. The situation today is significantly different, and we fully respect the sanctions in force at any given time. ROCKWOOL did not participate in the contract tender for the Kronstad Marine Plant project mentioned in 2022. In Russia, we no longer produce specific products for this segment.

In Europe alone, we distribute more than 120 million packs of stone wool each year. Our products are widely available in both the Russian and Ukrainian markets through a wide range of distributors. Therefore, it is also impossible for us to know or have any control over who all the end users are.

It is absolutely correct that ROCKWOOL’s CEO, Jens Birgersson, participated in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in 2019 with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and over a thousand other politicians and business leaders. Jens participated in a roundtable session with about 70-100 other people, where President Putin spoke, among others. He has never met him one-on-one or in smaller gatherings.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we have chosen to maintain passive ownership of our four factories in Russia. We do this because we believe it is the least bad solution in a situation where we really only have bad solutions to choose from. The four factories operate completely independently of the headquarters in Denmark and without any form of support. If we choose to leave Russia, we know that the factories will be taken over by a local actor and continue to operate as if nothing had happened – just in Russian hands. That would be giving the Russian regime four well-functioning factories, our unique technology, all earnings, and all future cash flows. We do not believe that contributes to anything good for Ukraine. Instead, we choose to do what we believe serves the Russian regime the least well, namely to maintain passive ownership.”

En Danwatch-undersøgelse

Maersk employees in Liberia work in highly problematic conditions

MONROVIA – When it was built in 1960, the Ducor Hotel in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, was the most luxurious hotel in Africa. Five stars, eight floors, 106 rooms, a pool, tennis courts, a bar, a French restaurant and, of course, the right kind of guests.

It is said that Uganda’s long-serving president Idi Amin once swam in the pool while holding a gun in his hand. Today, almost twenty years after the end of Liberia’s second civil war, the hotel remains as a looted ruin.

Only the phenomenal view from the hotel is left preserved.

From the top floor of the hotel the view sweeps for miles.

To the west, lies the rolling expanse of the Atlantic. To the east, you can see The Executive Mansion, the office of President George Weah, and the milk-white buildings of the United Nations. To the north, are the canyons of West Point, one of Monrovia’s densely packed slums, and further out to the horizon is The Freeport of Monrovia, the capital’s major port, where three large container ships are docked on a humid afternoon in late May.

Down at the port, Ballah Kpadeh works. A short man in his mid-40s with large sunglasses glued on his face.

He is employed as a truck driver for Maersk’s port company APM Terminals, which in 2010 was awarded a lucrative 25-year contract to operate the Freeport of Monrovia.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet met with Ballah Kpadeh and a number of his current and former colleagues in Monrovia, while investigating how Maersk runs port operations in one of the world’s poorest countries.

We have documents proving systematic wage issues and dismissals that are in violation of Liberia’s labour laws.

In addition, seven current and seven former Maersk employees have chosen to come forward with their stories, about substantial cement dust contamination, futile health insurance and the harassment of employees involved with the union.

Liberia projekt de endelig redi Her er det:
In 2010, Maersk's port company APM Terminals was awarded a 25-year contract for the sole responsibility of port operations in Liberia's capital Monrovia. The port is one of West Africa's largest and one of the country's most important forms of infrastructure.
  • APM Terminals is 100 percent owned by Maersk A.P. Møller – Maersk.

  • In February this year, the group made a record profit in Danmark of 118 billion Danish Krone after tax.

  • Never before has a Danish company yielded such great results.

  • A.P. Møller – Maersk employs more than 80,000 people in over 80 countries.

“APM Terminals make a lot of money from running the port, but they don’t care about us workers who do the actual work,” says Ballah Kpadeh, who is also a union representative for the port workers.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have presented the port workers situation to Karsten Kristensen, vice-president of 3F Transport, who serve Danish port workers.

He describes the conditions at the port of Monrovia as “appalling”.

“It’s shameful. Maersk knows how to treat its employees. We can clarly see that in Denmark, but abroad they are operating at the lowest common denominator. It is disappointing to see”, he tells Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet.

Maersk did not wish to be interviewed by Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet, but acknowledges that there are “discrepancies” at APM Terminals in Liberia.

However, they rejected several of the more specific criticisms.

In an email, press officer Signe Wagner writes:

“At Maersk, we are aware that there have been disputes in the port of Monrovia and we are cooperating with the unions and authorities to resolve them,” she writes.

“APM Terminals tjener mange penge på at drive havnen, men de er ligeglade med os ansatte, der udfører selve arbejdet”
"We are prepared to die for better working conditions. Our people deserve better." Ballah Kpadeh, 43.

Long-lasting problems

The port of Monrovia is by far Liberia’s most important form of infrastructure.

“The Gateway to Our Economy,” reads a sign at its heavily guarded entrance.

Behind the green walls that separate the port area from one of the capital’s busy access roads, container ships arrive and depart in a constant stream.

Rice, electronics, oil and building materials, are shipped in while rubber, iron ore, palm oil and timber are shipped out.

These problems at the port did not arise overnight.

In March 2018, employees walked off the job frustrated with their working conditions.

They were angry about wide-ranging issues, including a lack of pay rises and a reduction to their health insurance.

A year and a half later, in September 2019, several of the workers who were on strike were fired which was in direct violation of Liberia’s labour bill, Decent Work Act 2015

This is stated in documents sent to APM Terminals Liberia from the Ministry of Labour, which Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have obtained.

And a year later, in September 2020, a large group of workers – supported by the Dock Workers Union of Liberia (DOWUL) – went on a three-day strike in protest over issues including their pay and health insurance.

This incident led to the DOWUL union, the Ministry of Labour and APM Terminals Liberia signing an agreement – the first step towards ending the unrest at the port.

But today, ten months after signing the agreement, employees are calling for tangible action.

Their working conditions are still deeply unsatisfactory, according to those who met with Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet in Monrovia.

“At most, there has been a 0.5 percent improvement, nothing more. All our problems still persist”, says Ballah Kpadeh

“I’d rather be a free, hungry man than a slave”

By the end of 2021, Soko Kromah had had enough.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet met with him in his home, just a few dark rooms above a small shop selling biscuits and mobile data.

The ceiling hangs in tatters and drips with condensation. It’s the wet season and the air is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

The room’s stone floor is bordered by a rusty freezer, cans of cooking oil and a stack of Monrovia Brewery cases.

45-year-old Soko Kromah lives in New Kru Town, a township on Bushrod Island, north of Monrovia’s city centre.

In 2014, the island was devastated by the Ebola epidemic. People were holed up in their homes while international medical teams went from house to house collecting infected people for treatment.

Now the streets are full of cars, motorcycles and kekehs, Liberia’s electrically-powered rickshaws, all constantly honking, and swerving to avoid the huge puddles which have appeared from the thunder storms during the night.

Maersk employees have had enough

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have met several current and former employees at the port of Monrovia. Fourteen of them have agreed to come forward with their names and identities. Meet them here.

Soko Kromah was hired to drive a forklift at the port in 2011. At first, he was happy with his job. It was something to get out of bed for and he got a fixed salary.

But over the years he became frustrated, and six months ago he faced the consequences of quitting his job without something else lined up.

Today he makes a living by renting out his car, while dreaming of a future in Europe, hopefully France. Times are hard in the small home in New Kru Town, where he is the sole breadwinner for ten family members, but as he says:

“I would rather be a free, hungry man than a slave.”

During his time at APM Terminals, Soko Kromah was particularly frustrated by the pay, and he was not alone.

All of the port workers that Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have talked to have individually expressed that they were cheated each year for the equivalent of a month’s salary.

And this has been confirmed by Augustus Payne Tarr, long-time IT manager of APM Terminals in Liberia, and is backed up by various legal documents, pay slips and statements, letters of employment and employee handbooks, which Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have obtained.

“APM Terminals think people are so stupid in Liberia that they can get away with anything,” says Payne Augusts Tarr, who during his time at APM Terminals was a permanent member of the seven-man executive management team.

Educated in the US, he now owns a hotel near the Chinese embassy in Congo Town. After ten years of employment, he resigned last year to protest APM Terminal’s way of conducting business in Liberia.

“There are employees who are entitled to an extra month’s salary every December, but instead they just get paid their annual salary in thirteen instalments. APM Terminals is cheating its employees,” says Augustus Payne Tarr.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet were told by Maersk’s press officer Signe Wagner that the company is aware of the dispute. However, she denies that Maersk owes money to its employees.

“We have sought advice on this from an external independent auditor and we await their conclusions,” she writes in an email.

Plagued by cement dust contamination

One of APM Terminal’s major clients at the Port of Monrovia is Liberia Cement Corporation (CEMENCO). The company is among the largest in the country. It is responsible for all procurement, processing and sale of cement in Liberia.

The cement ships are foregrounded by all the current and former APM Terminals employees Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet met in Monrovia. The ships are responsible for the port being plagued by extensive cement dust pollution, each worker stresses.

Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have received photographs and video footage clearly showing how the dust hangs in the air and obscures visibility.

We are not aware of any employees being injured or becoming unwell as a result of their work unloading cement.

CEMENCO imports cement in a powdered form, which means that when their ships need to be unloaded, dust covers the port area. The dust goes straight into the worker’s eyes, ears and nose, especially for the employees who perform their tasks on the quay. 

One of them is crane operator Alexander Vinton, 42, who has worked at the port since 2017. Sweat beads on his smooth head, and his eyes are locked in a contemptuous stare while he recounts with Monrovia’s crashing Atlantic waves in the background.

“My health has deteriorated since I started working at the port. My eyes burn and my breathing is laboured,” he says.

“When I’m up in the crane, it gets so hot that I have to open the window and the cement dust flies straight in.”

"When I'm up in the crane, it gets so hot that I have to open the window and the cement dust flies straight in," Alexander Vinton 42.
  • In cooperation with Ekstra Bladet and the local media outlet Voice of Liberia, Danwatch has been in Monrovia to investigate the working conditions at Maersk’s port company APM Terminals.
  • Conducting over twenty interviews with former and current employees, Liberian politicians, lawyers and relevant experts, we have identified a number of problematic issues at the port in the country’s capital Monrovia.
  • During which reams of internal company documents as well as government papers have come into our possession.
  • Seven current and seven former employees have chosen to come forward exposing both their names and identities.
  • Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet met with them in Monrovia and have permission to use their stories.
  • We have also been in contact with employees who only wanted to speak with us off the record.
  • Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet submitted the employees’ criticism to Maersk.
  • The company did not want to be interviewed, but sent us an email in response.

APM Terminals employees do not believe that they are supplied with adequate protective equipment or that the health insurance the company has provided them covers adequate treatment. However, Maersk does not acknowledge these issues.

“All employees, regardless of who they are employed by, are required to wear full safety equipment, which is provided for them. We are not aware that any employees have been injured or have become unwell due to their work unloading cement,” writes press officer Signe Wagner in an email to Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet.

Jane Frølund Thomsen, senior physician at the occupational and environmental medicine department at Bispebjerg Hospital, has seen videos of the dust at the harbour and has been presented with the testimonies of the employees.

Her assessment is clear:

“There is a risk of eye and lung damage. Especially in the long term. Lung disease does not happen overnight, but if you are surrounded by dust day after day, year after year, you risk getting bronchitis and potentially even silicosis”, she told Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet.

Fear and threats

APM Terminals’ employees in Liberia are now speaking up. In an email, Maersk writes that it respects the right of its employees “to freely go through the trade unions of their choice”.

But those Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet have spoken have individually stated that there is a history of out spoken employees at the port of Monrovia being threatened and discriminated against.

That’s why it hasn’t been an easy decision to come forward with his story, says electrician Willie Gbappy. He’s in his mid-30s, sitting in a plastic chair in a grey polo outside his house, a matchbox, in the Monrovia suburb of Johnsonville.

He dampens his forehead with a small towel.

“Ledelsen vil ikke have, at vi fortæller om vores arbejdsforhold. Men jeg stiller mig alligevel frem, fordi det er på tide at folk forstår, hvad vi får igennem for at passe vores arbejde”
"We have been told not to talk to journalists. Management doesn't want us to talk about our working conditions. But I'm coming forward anyway because it's time people understood what we go through to do our jobs," says Willie Gbappy, 36.

“We have been told not to talk to journalists. Management doesn’t want us to talk about our working conditions. But I’m coming forward anyway because it’s time people understood what we go through to do our jobs,” he says.

Truck driver Ballah Kpadeh is an employee who has repeatedly clashed with management. Danwatch and Ekstra Bladet obtained a letter from APM Terminals to the Liberian government, in which the company complains about Ballah Kpadeh.

The letter, sent to the Ministry of Labour in September 2020 – the same month a Ballah Kpadeh helped organise the strike – says he “has done everything he can to destroy the company’s reputation and create unrest in the workplace”.

But Ballah Kpadeh is not intimidated. Change at the port requires courage. Someone has to be at the forefront, he says.

“We are ready to die for better working conditions. Our people deserve better.”

Meanwhile, from the top of the Ducor Hotel’s musty ruin, you can see one set of containers after another being sailed towards Freeport of Monrovia’s harbour basin.

The shipping traffic is endless – just like the frustration of the dockers.

A Danwatch investigation

Two Danish power plants contribute in making a Lebanese tourist gem one of the most air-polluted cities in the world

Fadi Abou Khalil never hangs his white clothes to dry. 

“We can only wear black clothes. If you wash a white T-shirt and hang it to dry here, smoke particles will stick to it and discolor it,” Fadi Abou Khalil tells us when we meet him on the roof terrace above his house. With his big round eyes, a gray-black beard and dressed in a black hoodie, Fadi Abou Khalil contemplates the power plant that blocks his view of the sea in the coastal city of Zouk Mikael, located a little north of Lebanon’s capital Beirut.

»The noise from the powerful engines is going on all day. Our breathing is affected by the pollution, the dust, and the smoke descending on us,« says Abou Khalil, who works as a musician on a daily basis. 

The power plant in Zouk Mikael entered into commercial operation in 1987 and has been criticized for its polluting for many years. But according to the residents of Zouk Mikael, thing only got worse after the Danish company BWSC enlarged it with a secondary power plant also running on heavy fuel oil (HFO).

»In the past, we were not as much affected in this area because there were only two high chimneys and the smoke tended to drift towards other areas. Now, unfortunately, 10-12 shorter chimneys have been added. It has not helped us in any way. On the contrary, the smoke bothers us even more now,« observes Maroon Abou Khalil, Fadi Abou Khalil’s cousin, who runs a car workshop on the ground floor of the house, which is located a hundred meters from the power plant. 

In a collaboration with Daraj, a Lebanese investigative media outlet, Danwatch visited the cities of Jiyeh and Zouk Mikael in Lebanon, where residents testified to us how soot particles, acid rain, noise, smoke and the smell of fuel from the two power plants have become a normal part of everyday life.

For many years, the two power plants have formed an important part of the backbone of Lebanon’s power supply. Consequently, a great deal of enthusiasm was generated in 2013, when the Danish company Burmeister & Wain Scandinavian Contractor (BWSC), in a consortium partnership with the German company MAN Diesel & Turbo, won two contracts for almost two billion DKK (280 million $), tasking them to enlarge two power plants with a total of 272 megawatts. 

At peak load, the Danish power plants theoretically should be able to cover approximately 18 percent of Lebanon’s current electricity needs.

»We are, of course, extremely satisfied with winning these two considerable contracts, that taken together constitute the largest order in BWSC’s history,« said BWSC’s director at the time, Anders Heine Jensen. And BWSC was not left to its own devices when undertaking this enormous task. In addition to crucial help from the Danish Embassy in Lebanon, the Danish Export Credit Agency (EKF) helped the Danish company winning the contract by offering Lebanon a loan of more than DKK 1.9 billion to pay BWSC for the project.

According to EKF, the power plant, which runs on heavy fuel oil (HFO) – one of the world’s most polluting fuels – was part of Lebanon’s plan to ensure a »more stable supply and in the long run, also implementing more renewables in the grid«.

In Lebanon, however, the power plant is known as the »powerhouse of death« – a nickname reflecting that fact that its combustion of HFO emits enormous amounts of CO2, nitrogen oxides, soot and sulfur dioxide, which not only have a negative climate impact but also contribute to cause diseases among locals. And BWSC’s power plant enlargement has in no way improved the situation.

On the contrary, the emission of polluting particles from the Zouk power plant has proved to be a direct cause of in turning the nearby tourist town of Jounieh into the fifth most polluted city in the Arab world and the 23rd most polluted city in the world. This transpires from a report from published by Greenpeace in 2018, the year after BWSC’s enlargement of the power plant was completed. 

And what about the stable power supply that should have given the Lebanese 3.5 more hours of electricity a day? So far, no progress has been made. Lebanon’s economic crisis has exacerbated problems in the energy sector leading to a final collapse of Lebanon’s power supply in the summer of 2021. Today, most Lebanese are restricted to only 1-2 hours of electricity per day through the public power grid.

»We often see companies in the global north – being bound by legislation in their home countries to not exceed a certain emission level of polluting particles – operating in global south countries in a way where they contribute to air pollution without following their own guidelines«, Julien Jreissati, head of Greenpeace in the Middle East, stresses in an interview with Danwatch and Daraj. 

Danwatch and Daraj reached out to BWSC for answers as to the kind of efforts the company has put into reducing environmental pollution from the two power plants and how it responds to the consequences of its power plant pollution for ordinary Lebanese. 

We were also looking for an answer as to the present status is in an ongoing arbitration case between BWSC and the Lebanese government, where the Danish company has sued Lebanon for at least 130 million dollars (approximately 915 million DKK) over the issue of several exceeded payment deadlines in connection with the project .

But BWSC has declined all interview request as well as refrained from answering our written questions. »In principle, we cannot and will not answer questions on specific customer relationships«, writes Torben Eriksen, BWSC’s project manager in Lebanon. 

EKF also declines granting an interview. But in an email response to Danwatch and Daraj, EKF maintains that both power plants »work as intended« and »do produce a stable electricity«, which reduces pollution from private generators. 

Furthermore, EKF emphasizes that its financing of the power plant was enacted before the agency’s current climate policy, which is said to be in the process of »phasing out export financing of fossil fuels in the energy sector abroad«.

This decision followed in the wake of a Danwatch exposure from 2021, reporting on a similar but newer HFO power plant constructed in Bermuda – also, according to experts and citizens, to the great detriment of the climate and local residents.

Read more: Dansk eksporteventyr er et mareridt for klimaet – og for naboerne

In a reply to Danwatch and Daraj, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasizes that since the end of 2021, Denmark has halted »public Danish financing and assistance for the export of fossil fuels in the energy sector abroad«. The letter also explains that the Danish embassy in Lebanon helped BWSC as a part of its task of »opening doors to local authorities and other relevant stakeholders for the purpose of strengthening exports«.

Lebanon to the polls

On May 15, 2022, the Lebanese go to the polls for the first time since the government was overthrown during popular protests in 2019, which many Lebanese refer to as the »revolution«. 

The election comes at a time when Lebanon is in the midst of one of the worst financial crises in the modern world. According to the World Bank, it is caused by a political elite, who »wilfully« has brought the country into disrepair through years of corruption, nepotism and unfair distribution of the country’s resources. 

In 2020, Lebanon’s GDP shrank by 21.4 percent and last year the economy shrank by a further 10.5 percent, the largest decline among the world’s 193 countries. At the same time, the country experienced the world’s third highest inflation rate, surpassed only by Sudan and Venezuela, and the currency has lost 93 percent of its value over the past two years.As a consequence of its economic collapse, Lebanon can no longer to afford to keep its electricity production running. »With the current economic crisis, Lebanon can not afford to buy oil, so only 10-20 percent of the country’s energy needs are currently being met,« Jessica Obeid, one of Lebanon’s leading energy experts, explains to Danwatch and Daraj. 

But the power still being produced is partly generated from the two coal-black power plants, which were developed by the Danish company BWSC with support from Danish public agencies. 

»This was how they destroyed people«

Heavy Fuel Oil is a residual product from the refining of oil, and the tar-like substance also stands out from other energy sources by its many harmful effects on humans and the environment. 

The Lebanese doctor Paul Makhlouf knows this all too well. In his white coat in his office at Notre Dame University Hospital near the Zouk power plant, he talks about the power plant’s impact on local citizens. 

With a stethoscope around his neck Makhlouf puts on his glasses and begins browsing through a stack of papers on his desk.

»Here it is!«, he exclaims when he finally succeeds in finding his research paper on air pollution around the power plant, which dates back to the year 2000 – many years before, BWSC developed the power plant.

Paul Makhlouf is a doctor at the local hospital near Zouk Mikael. He explains that the air pollution from the Zouk power plant is a co-cause of making his patients sick. Photo: Florian Elabdi

Except for the Greenpeace report from 2018 – which confirms that air pollution in the tourist town of Jounieh near the Zouk power plant is higher than in the rest of Lebanon – no new research has been published since BWSC enlarged the power plant’s capacity by 194 megawatts. 

»At the time, we found that among the residents close to the power plant, there was a much higher number of respiratory infections, especially asthma and child allergies, compared to the rest of Lebanon. There were also a higher number of cases of the lung disease COPD and cancer«, Paul Makhlouf points out, referring to his research.

At the same time, he sees no reason to dispute the assertion, that the situation must have worsened, since BWSC’s enlarged the the diesel power plant with 11 new chimneys: »If we did a new study, the results would undoubtedly be even worse. Now more people live her, we have more traffic and more chimneys at the power plant, which use a cheaper and more toxic oil than before on account of the economic crisis,« he says. That a large part of the pollution demonstrably does originate from the power plant is also confirmed by Greenpeace.

»We could see from satellite images in our study in 2018 that a large part of the fume came from the Zouk power plant,« says Julien Jreissati, head of Greenpeace in the Middle East. 

The towns of Zouk Mikael and Jounieh are located on the Mediterranean coast, but surrounded by mountains, which means that the smoke from the power plant has a hard time evaporating instead settles like a heavy smog over the towns. This is explained by the Lebanese doctor Paul Makhlouf, who specializes in lung and skin diseases: 

»There are several reasons why we see more cases of disease here. One is, of course, that the power plant’s emissions of polluting particles are unhealthy for the environment, the second being that the geographical specificity of the area means that it becomes more polluted,« he says.

Play Video

Julien Jreissati, programme director at Greenpeace in the Middle East, talks about how European countries have green goals and ambitions for their own countries, but support fossil energy projects abroad.

Play Video

Najat Saliba, professor of chemistry, has previously researched the air pollution in Zouk Mikael. In 2015, her research showed that the city had one of Lebanon’s highest levels of air pollution. When Greenpeace looked into the air pollution three years later, Zouk Mikael had not only the highest level of pollution in Lebanon, but also one of the highest in the entire Middle East.

Although Mr. Makhlouf stresses that many factors contribute to the pollution, including car traffic and private generators, he does consider the power plant to be a major culprit: »When a sick patient walks into my clinic, I cannot tell, whether he has become ill because of the power plant, of course. But the density of toxic particles from the power plant, such as sulfuric acid and soot, is so intense that it directly affects the health of my patients,« he says. 

»They promised us electricity, but they have only destroyed people with their poison, and all the different enlargements of the power plant in some way did contribute to that.«

EKF knew about the potential contamination 

The Danish enlargement of the power plants began in 2013, but before that, the Danish government helped pushing through the billion-dollar, in particular Danish Export Credit Agency (EKF), which issued loans and guarantees totaling almost DKK 2 billion for the two projects. Today, EKF and the Danish government no longer finance fossil power plants abroad. That decision was taken in the wake of Danwatch investigave reporting from 2021 on a similar but newer HFO power plant in Bermuda, which according to experts and citizens is highly detrimental to the climate and to residents.

However, such considerations were not taken into account when export subsidies were granted  2012-2013. 

Also EKF entered the project well aware that the power plants were at risk of developing into major sources of pollution in the country. In EKF’s CSR report from 2013, the agency noted that seven projects had a potential to become significant CO2-polluters, and this was especially true of the two power plants in Lebanon. 

In addition, the CSR report from 2013 also states that EKF was aware of the risk that the power plants might end up emitting large amounts of the toxic gases NOx and SOx, which would exceed limit values for acceptable pollution as determined by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). EKF itself admits that these guidelines are to be followed when assessing environmental consequences of its business activities.

NOx and SOx are both harmful gases that are formed during the burning of HFO, and through chemical transformations in the atmosphere both can contribute in creating smog, soot and acid rain, causing major health problems like respiratory and lung diseases as a consequence. 

Soot pollution from HFO in particular increases the risk of developing a number of disorders, Kåre Press points out.

»Those who get sick usually incur respiratory diseases such as asthma, bronchitis and COPD, especially children may suffer severely from asthma. Speaking of mortality, primarily adults die of cardiovascular disease and blood clots, including cerebral haemorrhage. In addition, soot particles are carcinogenic at the highest level.«

Danwatch and Daraj approached EKF to enquire about the agency’s considerations on issuing loans and guarantees for a project knowing full well that it would be environmentally polluting. In an email to Danwatch, EKF states that decisions on financing of power plants in Jiyeh and Zouk Mikael in Lebanon were taken before EKF’s current climate policy.

»EKF’s climate policy of November 2021 includes a halt to all export financing for thermal coal extraction, thermal coal logistics and coal-fired power plants. The policy also states that from the beginning of 2022, export financing of fossil fuels in the energy sector abroad will be phased out«, EKF’s press officer Ina Bjerregaard-Castenborg clarifies in the email.

Read more: Efter Danwatch-afsløring: Stop for eksportstøtte til forurenende kraftværker

»Limit values were to high« 

Although official policy at the time did not prevent EKF from funding fossil fuel projects around the world, they still had measures in place to reduce the environmental impact as much as possible. Among other things, EKF required that CO2 reports were to be prepared as long as the loan has not been repaid, accounting for how much any given project pollutes, and in fact, this was also done in connection with the Danish-funded power plants in Lebanon. In this case, a German engineering company, MVV Decon, compiled the reports for EKF.

As in the agency’s CSR report from 2013, EKF in this case also bases its assesments on limit values as set by the IFC. If one or both of the power plants exceed a certain limit value, EKF is required to take necessary steps to reduce emissions.

Danwatch has been granted documentary access to the CO2 reports on the two power plants and we asked an expert to assess the pollution data referenced in them. DTU air pollution and climate researcher Kåre Press at first concludes that IFC’s limit values are already far too high when compared to modern standards, and yet the power plant emission trangresses them:

»SOx and particulate emissions should be halved, and NOx should be a factor of 10 lower than measured. This can be easily achieved through desulfurization, filters and selective catalytic reduction (a technology that reduces NOx emissions, ed.). Still, it does not seem that these technologies have been installed. I completely fail to understand how EKF can embrace a project without even ensuring an effective flue gas cleaning« Kåre Press observes. 

We have asked BWSC whether the company in fact did install some of these technologies ind order to reduce air pollution, so far without any response.

In response to queries from Danwatch and Daraj, EKF concedes that emissions from the power plants could not comply with the limit values at that time, and that EKF since then have been working continuously to bring the figures down. So far without any huge success, the CO2 reports show.

In 2017, for example, power plant emissions in Zouk Mikael exceeded the limit value for permitted emissions of NOx, which was also the case in 2019. EKF, however, claims that the agency never received data on air quality in the two cities, allegedly because they are »still under validation by the Ministry of Environment«.  

We asked EKF for an explanation: How come emissions are not lowered if attempts are made to bring them down? And did they ever received data on air quality in the two cities? In an email response, they reply:

»The export loan was repaid in November 2019, therefore EKF has not subsequently received any reports from the project. However, EKF upheld the dialogue until the loan was repaid in order to ensure a recution of values.«

Danish climate hypocrisy? 

The same year that BWSC began its development project with financial support from EKF, The cabinet of Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmarks’ government at the time, published its long-awaited climate plan. »Progress in global climate action so far has been far to modest,« its the foreword read.

It is quite a paradox that our politicians at home is giving green self-celbratory speeches again and again, telling the public what a green nation we are, while Denmark, on the other hand, is financially supporting black energy projects in developing countries

Therefore, more action had to be put behind words, and as the climate plan emphasized: Denmark is a rich country that must lead by setting a good example. But despite the stated ambitions to reduce global CO2 emissions, the Danish embassy in Lebanon decided to help BWSC achieving the billion deal for the two polluting HFO power plants.

»Lebanon is a new market for us. For this reason, we are also very grateful for the fantastic support we have received from the Danish Embassy in Lebanon. The embassy has done a marvelous and completely unprecedented job, and without it we would not be where we are today,« said Anders Heine Jensen, then CEO of BWSC, when the contract was finalised. 

»It’s a gigantic contract. It is probably the biggest contract I will ever have the opportunity to achieve for Denmark«, said Jan Top Christensen, Denmark’s then ambassador to Lebanon. »This contract is going to have a huge impact on millions of people,« he continued.

Denmark’s former Minister of Trade and Investment, Pia Olsen Dyhr, also lavished big words on this »environmentally friendly« project, in spite of the fact that Danish side was well aware of the extensive pollution this project would contribute to: 

»It’s a historic contract. I am glad that it will benefit growth and employment in Denmark and give Lebanon a more stable and environmentally friendly energy production,« said Mrs. Olsen Dyhr. 

Kåre Press, the researcher from DTU, is shocked by the Danish project, and even more so over the fact that it is described as environmentally friendly. 

»First of all, I would like to say how shocked I am that Denmark is finansing power plants that use heavy fuel oil, which is one of the world’s most polluting fuels. In no way, should we be doing such a thing. We should instead be globally enowned for delivering energy technologies that solve environmental and climate problems – not fossil energy technologies that create environmental and climate damages,« Kåre Press writes in an email to Danwatch.

At the same time, he is also puzzled by such a flagrant discrepancy between ambitious green promises on one hand, and real life black actions on the other.

»It is quite a paradox that our politicians at home is giving green self-celbratory speeches again and again, telling the public what a green nation we are, while Denmark, on the other hand, is financially supporting black energy projects in developing countries,« Kåre Press-Sørensen writes.

Danwatch and Daraj have asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs why the Danish embassy in Lebanon ventures to help BWSC win the contract in the first place, since it was clear from the outset how polluting HFO power plants are, and whether Denmark couldn’t have a found a greener solution to offer instead.

»Danish embassies help Danish companies around the world on a daily basis to open doors to local authorities and other relevant stakeholders with the aim of strengthening exports of, Danish energy technology, among other things,« a spokedsperson from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs states. »In this particular instance, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carried out this assistance in Lebanon at the request of the BWSC«. 

On the question of whether Denmark could have offered Lebanon a more climate-friendly solution, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not consider that it could have put more effort into finding better alternatives.

»It was solely up to the Lebanese authorities to organize the tender process in this specific case, just as they alone decided which energy solution they eventually wished to go ahead with,« the ministry writes. Like EKF, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasizes that at the end of 2021, the government decided to stop all public Danish financing and aid for export of fossil fuels to foreign energy sectors. 

»The current government has a crystal clear ambition to strengthen Danish exports of green technology solutions. Therefore, it is also a greater priority for the Foreign Service today o ensure that our economic diplomacy and assistance to Danish companies abroad do pursue a greener and more sustainable agenda than has formerly beent the case,« the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states.

Danwatch has applied for documentary access to files from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the communication between the Danish Embassy in Lebanon and the Lebanon Ministry of Energy in order to clarify to which extent Denmark was involved in the project, but after three months, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs still has not finalized our request.

It is very unfortunate that developed countries in the EU lend us money and provide us with completely obsolete technology. They do one thing in their own countries like installing renewable energy technologies, and another thing here leaving us with outdated, polluting technology. It really is a wasted opportunity.

The Lebanese are trying to tackle the pollution 

Back in Zouk Mikael, architect Adib Dada and a group of Lebanese volunteers weed in a small forest they have planted between two busy partitions in the heart of Zouk Mikael with the power plant’s huge red and white chimney looming in the background. 

»We are in Lebanon’s most polluted city,« said Adib Dada as Danwatch and Daraj met him on a sunny afternoon. According to a Greenpeace report from 2020, Lebanon already has the highest mortality rate in the entire Middle East due to air pollution. And the report explicitly points to power plants using fossil fuels as one of the main causes of air pollution.

Therefore, Adib Dada and his group of volunteers have chosen to take matters into their own hands: They have planted a »power plant forest«, as they call it, close to the Zouk power plant. »My idea was to plant a series of micro-forests close to the power plant, which could help clean the air,« he explains in his white shirt and curly black hair as he squats and tears weeds up from the root. 

»We selected 17 different plant and tree species that are endemic to the surrounding natural areas around Zouk Mikael and that make up the natural ecosystem,« explains Adib. 

Adib Dada’s project is one of his many similar projects around Lebanon, which seeks to integrate nature into modern urban development. And when he was contacted by a resident of Zouk Mikael, who told about the city’s pollution problems, he was in no doubt about where to start his next project.

Adib Dada and his group of volunteers look after the power plant forest in Zouk Mikael, which they planted in 2020. Photo: Florian Elabdi

By requesting documentary for access to EKF, Danish embassies and Lebanese authorities and by reviewing EKF’s annual and sustainability reports, Danwatch, in collaboration with the investigative Lebanese media Daraj, was able to examine power plants in Lebanon, funded and built by Denmark. 

Queries in local news media and social media in Lebanon enabled us to uncover local pollution from power plants and to highlight the Danish government’s involvement in the multimillion dollars contracts.

We subsequently visited the power plants in Lebanon, where we talked to residents and doctors in the two cities about the pollution and how it affects them. We also interviewed Lebanese officials who were responsible for granting Denmark the contract about the process.

We have presented our documentation to Danish and Lebanese experts in air pollution. This investigative study was conducted with the support of the Journalismfund.eu

»My work as an architect contributed in a way indirectly to climate change, so I started thinking about how to use architecture to mitigate climate change instead,« explains Dada about her purpose with the many projects.

Their aim is to plant another five micro-forests near the power plant, but the completion of the project depends on additional funding from donors inside and outside Lebanon.

And while some relatively small forests at intersections and roundabouts are not going to change anything significant for the pollution in Zouk Mikael, Adib Dada believes that architecture should be part of the solution in combating climate change.

»Sure, a micro-forest like this may not have a big impact on the pollution in the area, but it’s a great conversation starter and also a proof of concept where we show that we can plant forests in small areas of the city and that architecture and nature do not have to be opposites.«

Before we say goodbye, Adib Dada makes a final point criticizing Denmark for having contributed to the current pollution in Zouk Mikael.

»It is very unfortunate that developed countries in the EU lend us money and provide us with completely obsolete technologi. They do one thing in their own countries where they install renewable energy, and another thing here where, leaving us with outdated, polluting technology. It really is a wasted opportunity.«

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