Norwegian bank withdraws investment in company for violating Indigenous rights in Brazil

Brasil de Fato

Last Thursday (5), the Bank of Norway published a note on its website informing of the withdrawal of six companies from the Norwegian Government’s Global Pension Fund (GPFG) due to human rights violations. Among them is the Spanish company Prosegur, a subsidiary in Brazil that provides services to the oil and fat producer Agropalma in Pará. According to the notice, Prosegur is practicing “serious and systematic human rights violations.”    

The decision is based on a recommendation published in April 2024 by the Ethics Council of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund. The council determines which activities will receive investments based on guidelines on compliance with human rights and sustainable environmental practices.   

“Between 2021 and 2023, while on guard duty at Agropalma, security guards from SegurPro [responsible for Prosegur’s security sector] prevented Indigenous peoples from visiting their ancient graves, fishing in the Acará River, and traveling to the town they depend on to buy supplies and seek medical attention,” the recommendation states.   

The recommendation is based on news reports, information from Prosegur’s website, public documents from the Pará Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPPA, in Portuguese), and a public civil action ruling. The document also uses information from the NGO Global Witness, which published the report The Shadow of Oil Palm in 2022, which shows the rights violations against Indigenous peoples and traditional communities because of the expansion of oil palm plantations in Brazil. “In the quilombola communities of Vila Gonçalves and Balsa, 206 families feel strangled by the oil palm plantations around them,” the report says.  

Since the 1980s, Agropalma has been expanding its oil palm plantations in the town of Tailândia, in Pará state. The company claims to own land that overlaps indigenous and quilombola territories, where cemeteries hold the graves of the ancestors of these communities.    

Although Agropalma controls the area, part of the land no longer belongs to the company. A public civil action led by the Pará Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPPA) identified that the registrations for Fazenda Roda de Fogo, which covers 22,000 hectares, were drawn up in a ghost registry office. The communities argue that this means that the documents Agropalma used to certify the property are invalid.    

In its recommendation, the Ethics Council also mentions a case from 2022, when a Prosegur security guard shot Reginaldo Pereira de Oliveira in the knee, suspected of stealing leftover hardware from the Carajás railroad in Marabá, Pará state. At the time, Prosegur was contracted by mining company Vale. Reginaldo died due to lack of medical attention. The Ethics Council report indicates the security guard’s failure to call for help. According to the document, at the end of 2023, Norway’s Global Pension Fund held 0.67% of Prosegur’s shares, worth approximately R$ 37 million (over US$ 6 million).  

The other companies that have lost investments from the Bank of Norway Pension Fund are China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited, due to allegations of corruption; Tianjin Pharmaceuticals, due to environmental damage; India’s Larsen & Toubro and the US company General Dynamics Corp, due to the production of components for nuclear weapons and the US company Turning Point Brands, due to the production of tobacco, an activity excluded from the fund’s list of investments.  

Brasil de Fato tried to contact Prosegur but did not hear back from them by the time this article was written. If the company responds, this article will be updated.