There have been some great developments around our Congo rainforest campaign, as the FT reported on its website this morning that one of the arms of the World Bank will offload the shares it owns in a company known to be destroying the forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has announced that it will divest its holdings in Olam International, a Singapore-based company which has operations in the DRC. The Congo report we released earlier this year showed how Olam was holding forest land granted in breach of the current moratorium which the World Bank itself helped establish and that it was also trading in dodgy timber. As a result, Olam has since given back its forest holdings to the DRC government, but it still buys illegal timber cut by local companies.
