Banking on shady ground: Should banks be more transparent about overseas lending?

A new report from Oxfam has linked Australia’s leading banks to overseas companies accused of land grabbing, child labour and illegal logging. But will the report change your banking practices?

Illegal logging, land grabs and child labour. All elements of dubious business practices often carried out in unregulated or corrupt environments.      

You wouldn’t necessarily think that relates to Australia but according to a new report by Oxfam, it does.

Helen Szoke the CEO of Oxfam Australia says there should be a zero-tolerance approach to investing in overseas companies.

"Australia's top big four banks are backing companies overseas that have resulted in people being forced off the land, homeless, and left hungry," says Ms Szoke. "They need to put the pressure on those companies to make appropriate compensation to the communities that are affected."

"They have an opportunity to say we will invest in those companies but we're going to make damn sure that what they do on the ground fits in with our own guidelines in terms of ethics and sustainability."

Oxfam’s latest report - Banking on Shaky Ground – identifies four key cases where Australia's biggest banks funded companies accused of illegally acquiring land and large scale environmental destruction.

The report links four banks to questionable operations around the world.

Westpac is linked to Malaysian logging giant WTK Group, which has been accused of illegal logging in PNG.

Commonwealth Bank to sugar operations run by agricultural commodities company, Bunge, under investigation for alleged links to land grabs in Brazil.

NAB is reportedly tied to the Singaporean palm oil giant Wilmar, under fire over environmental destruction.  

And ANZ is linked to Phnom Penh Sugar accused of hiring children and forcibly removing families from their homes in Cambodia.

Ongoing investigations have shown children young as seven were regularly employed in the company’s cane fields and that hundreds of families were forcibly removed from their land.

All four banks declined to be interviewed by SBS but in separate statements said they’ll consider the issues raised by the report, review their relationships with the respective companies, and in some cases sever them entirely.

But is that enough?

The deals are worth more than $20 billion and as Australia’s investment into Asia expands, questions over business practices will become more pertinent as will questions over where the banks put their money and where you put yours.

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