The stinky hippies at EarthRights International have lobbed a bit of a bomb with their report into the Burmese junta’s siphoning of money from Burmese gas projects. The Sydney Morning Herald had a great piece on the report, but Pravda hasn’t printed a word about it – and you can guess why:
Oil giants Total and Chevron are propping up Burma’s junta with billions of dollars hidden by the regime in Singapore, while trying to whitewash rights abuses, an environment group says. [...]
“The military elite are hiding billions of dollars of the peoples’ revenue in Singapore while the country needlessly suffers under the lowest social spending in Asia,” said Matthew Smith, a principal author of the reports.
The two local banks named in the report have denied the allegations, and there are calls for them to sue.
But here’s a cracking piece from freelance journo Eric Ellis that ran in the Age around the same time. Draw your own conclusions.