"Friends of the Earth groups complaint against ING Group admissible, declares OECD", 20 Jan 2020

The Dutch National Contact Point for the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) today declared a complaint from three Friends of the Earth groups (Milieudefensie (Netherlands), SDI (Liberia) and WALHI (Indonesia)) against Dutch bank ING admissible. This complaint is unique in that for the first time a company is accused of ‘contributing to’ rather than being merely ‘linked to’ wrongdoing. The complaint is supported by several other international organizations...

"This complaint demonstrates once again that we need binding legislation for financial institutions to put an end to dubious investments," Milieudefensie’s Anne Wijers says...

The organizations are particularly critical of ING because of its lack of awareness of existing abuses, underestimation of the extent of known abuses and inability to resolve them adequately. The organizations are also asking the OECD to clarify the conditions under which ING can be held responsible for the actions of companies they work with, the impact of their abuses and in what way ING should meaningfully contribute to remedies. The NCP is unlikely to make a final ruling on the complaint until spring 2021.