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Tax Justice Network

Climate love

Study: How “greenlaundering” conceals the full scale of fossil fuel financing


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Alison Schultz and Franziska Mager write in this extensive and deeply researched report about how the global financial system undermines climate goals.
Tax havens and international loopholes facilitate mass corruption worldwide, enabling tax evasion for the wealthy and money laundering for criminal organizations. To that list of disgraceful consequences, we can now add financial secrecy allowing banks and fossil fuel companies to hide their dirty investments, a practice termed “greenlaundering.” By using tax havens with weak transparency laws, fossil fuel companies obscure their activities, making it difficult to hold them accountable.
This report shows that 68% of fossil fuel financing from the 60 largest banks goes to subsidiaries in these tax havens. The lack of transparency makes it hard to track funds and enforce sustainable finance regulations, allowing banks and fossil fuel companies to profit at the expense of climate goals.
The report proposes a few key solutions to tackle greenlaundering:
1. Establishing global transparency rules through a UN Tax Convention, which would enhance accountability for multinational corporations.
2. Implementing comprehensive beneficial ownership transparency, making it easier to identify individuals behind fossil fuel companies and their subsidiaries.
3. Improving public country-by-country reporting to reveal economic activities, profits, and taxes paid, exposing hidden fossil fuel financing.
4. Strengthening pressure on banks to phase out fossil fuel investments and improve their reporting standards, particularly for financed emissions (scope 3), to ensure they align with climate goals.
5. Requiring better data from banks to assess climate risks more effectively and enforce global climate regulations.
For these reasons and more, I hope to see the international movement against tax havens to gain momentum until real change can be achieved. I am grateful to the Tax Justice Network and to the authors of this report for carrying out this extremely important work. Let the word spread far and wide!


Do you agree?

21 more agrees trigger social media ads

  • Rashid Kamau

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    7 w

    By masking harmful practices with misleading claims of sustainability, fossil fuel companies and financial institutions can perpetuate reliance on fossil fuels while appearing to support environmental initiatives.

    • Joseph Githinji

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      8 w

      The Tax Justice report is a great measure of accountability and an outline on the guidelines to stop greenlaundering.

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      • We Don't Have Time

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        8 w

        Dear Weston Wilson Your climate love has received over 50 agrees! We have reached out to Tax Justice Network by email and requested a response. I will keep you updated on any progress! To reach more people and increase the chance of a response, click the Share button above to share the review on your social accounts. For every new member that joins We Don't Have Time from your network, we will plant a tree and attribute it to you! /Adam, We Don't Have Time

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        • Princess

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          8 w

          The Tax Justice report is incredibly eye-opening!It’s so important to have this level of transparency, especially when it comes to exposing how fossil fuel financing can be hidden behind greenwashed claims.

          7

          Re-watch all our COP29 broadcasts

          We need to stop methane and #BuyMoreTime