SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
April, 26 2022, 03:48pm EDT
Contact:
Travis Nichols, travis@stand.earth
Ada Recinos, ada@amazonwatch.org
Pendle Marshall-Hallmark, pendle@amazonwatch.org
Citigroup AGM: Bank Called Out for Amazon Oil Financing
Report shows bank’s role in funding oil companies with ties to corruption, rights violations, pollution, and deforestation in the Amazon. Indigenous leaders, alongside human rights and environmental campaigners, calling for Citigroup to exit Amazon oil and gas.
WASHINGTON
Following Earth Day and on the day of Citigroup's AGM, activists supporting an Amazon Watch and Stand.earth led campaign to end Amazon drilling revealed a banner reading "Citi: Stop Destroying the Amazon," calling out Citi for its role as the top financier in the world of oil activity in the Amazon. Environmental campaigners at Stand.earth and Amazon Watch are also spotlighting an "Investor Risk Alert" highlighting the bank's exposure and central role in providing billions in financing and investments to oil and gas companies in the Amazon. Indigenous leaders and federations directly impacted by oil drilling are calling on Citigroup to commit to exit Amazon oil and gas.
Citigroup's investments and financing in Amazonian oil are tied to corruption, pollution, deforestation, and Indigenous rights violations - incompatible with its climate forward image. Without a clear commitment to end its role as a major driver of the fossil fuel industry in the Amazon, Citigroup's climate promises remain inadequate.
- Read the Risk Alert: https://www.stand.earth/publication/citigroup_riskalert
Citi's Annual General Meeting was met with protesters today urging Citigroup to release plans winding down its financing of the fossil fuel industry and to support two different shareholder proposals calling for the bank to cease its support for fossil fuel expansion and to produce a report evaluating its respect or lack thereof for Indigenous Peoples' right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. 12.8% of shareholders voted for Citi to cease its support for fossil fuel expansion, and 34% voted in favor of the Indigenous Rights resolution. While not yet in the majority, these votes represent significant amounts of investment capital and signal a growing push from shareholders for Citi to end fossil fuel expansion and recognize Indigenous rights.
The end to fossil fuel financing is being echoed by climate activists. Last week, protesters with Extinction Rebellion NYC blockaded Citigroup's headquarters for hours resulting in at least 19 arrests, New York Communities for Change activists confronted a Citigroup executive at the Reuters Responsible Business USA conference over the bank's continued support of oil and gas in the Amazon, and just yesterday students at Yale University confronted outgoing Citigroup board member Ernesto Zedillo, a professor at the school, about his role in enabling fossil fuel financing at Citi.
In 2021, Citigroup released an updated energy policy that rules out financing for oil and gas in the Arctic, yet the bank has made no commitments related to its financing of the oil industry in the Amazon. In a global declaration by Indigenous federations and allies, banks are being called to end financing of commodities like oil that are responsible for fragmenting and polluting the Amazon. Leadership on this issue is coming from European banks - including ING, Credit-Suisse, Natixis, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas, and Intesa - all of whom have made commitments to end financing for oil trade in Ecuador and beyond. This is consistent with international calls for protecting 80% of the Amazon by 2025 - a critical threshold to meet in order to prevent the biome from unraveling. Not a single U.S. bank has made any such commitments.
"Oil drilling in our Amazon has brought contamination, disease, deforestation, destruction of our cultures, and the colonization of our territories. It is an existential threat for us and violates our fundamental rights as Indigenous peoples. We are calling for an end to all new extraction on our lands, and as our ancestors and science now affirm, we must keep fossil fuels in the ground." - Nemo Andy Guiquita, a Waorani Indigenous leader and Women and Health Coordinator for the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE)
With the Amazon rainforest at the tipping point of ecological collapse, Citigroup's lack of an exclusion policy and exit strategy on Amazon oil and gas presents a significant reputational risk. Its financing has been instrumental in the build-out of oil drilling and infrastructure in critical rainforest areas and Indigenous territories. Its investments have long-term impacts and have supported the expansion of oil production, in many cases despite strong opposition from Indigenous communities. Citigroup is one of the top foreign banks financing state-owned oil companies operating in the Amazon. Its clients include Petrobras in Brazil, EcoPetrol in Colombia, PetroAmazonas/Petroecuador in Ecuador, and PetroPeru in Peru.
"The Amazon is the last place on the planet where oil drilling should be expanding, so Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser has a critical opportunity before her. Will she show a new kind of leadership and commit to aligning bank policy with what the world needs and what generations of Indigenous peoples and concerned citizens are calling for, or will she allow for business as usual and continued degradation of the Amazon?" said Tyson Miller, Amazon Campaigns Director at Stand.earth.
Pendle Marshall-Hallmark, Climate and Finance Campaigner at Amazon Watch said, "Activists are fed up with Citi's greenwashing. It can't call itself a climate leader while pouring billions into oil and gas exploitation anywhere, let alone on Indigenous territories in the Amazon. Citi's fossil fuel financing is razing the rainforest, spewing oil into local water sources, and destroying our climate. It has to stop now."
Citigroup is one of the only U.S. banks that has been providing funding to PetroEcuador (formerly PetroAmazonas), the state oil company of Ecuador, and the country is now planning to double oil production. Many of those expansion projects will open up pristine and roadless Amazon rainforest and titled territories of Indigenous peoples, who have not provided their consent, a right recently upheld by the country's Constitutional Court. Despite averaging two oil spills per week, the country is currently expanding drilling in protected areas such as Yasuni National Park, building roads in intact forests, and in areas near Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. Oil concessions that span approximately 7.5 million acres (3 million hectares) of rainforests are slated to be auctioned off this year.
In Peru, Citigroup is participating in a 10-year, 1.3 billion USD syndicated loan to the state-owned oil company PetroPeru, which is seeking to expand oil operations within the North Peruvian Amazon where the Indigenous Achuar and Wampis peoples live and are strongly opposed to any kind of oil drilling within their ancestral territory.
"Our collective fight to defend our lands and prevent oil drilling is not just a fight to protect our own communities but to protect the entire planet from the climate crisis we all face. The banks that finance the extraction and expansion of oil in the Amazon are complicit in genocide against indigenous peoples and in the perpetuation of a climate crisis that is an existential threat to all of us. All banks, including Citigroup, must commit to ending financing for the exploitation of fossil fuels in the Amazon and in the world in general.," says Nelton Yankur, President of the Federation of the Achuar Nationality of Peru.
At the end of March, the Exit Amazon Oil and Gas campaign provided a case study on the impact of oil and gas extraction in the Amazon Biome for the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report released by a coalition of top international environmental groups. The report revealed how U.S. banks are among the world's major drivers of climate chaos. The report, the most comprehensive analysis of fossil fuel banking to date, documents how U.S. banks such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase continue to fuel climate destruction, despite their many public pledges to the contrary. Crucially, the 13th annual report shows how most of the banks' biggest fossil fuel clients are actively expanding new fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure projects.
About Exit Amazon Oil and Gas
The Exit Amazon Oil and Gas campaign, led by Amazon Watch, and Stand.earth in collaboration with the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE) and the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA), is calling on banks to commit to exclude financing for oil and gas in the Amazon biome, starting with ending its expansion.
The campaign follows research completed by Stand.earth and Amazon Watch that exposes links between leading banks in the Global North and the Amazon oil and gas trade:
Stand.earth (formerly ForestEthics) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with offices in Canada and the United States that is known for its groundbreaking research and successful corporate and citizens engagement campaigns to create new policies and industry standards in protecting forests, advocating the rights of indigenous peoples, and protecting the climate. Visit us at
LATEST NEWS
Trump Sanctions on Cuba's Oil Company Expected to Worsen Humanitarian Crisis
"The US regime's secretary of state, driven by ambitions of conquest, presidential aspirations, and the vengeful sentiments of the elitist clique that propelled his political career, now further tightens the economic and energy stranglehold against Cuba," said the island's foreign minister.
Jun 11, 2026
Amid mounting global calls for President Donald Trump to end his administration's "economic genocide" in Cuba, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced sanctions against the state-owned oil and gas company, a move expected to worsen the island's fuel shortage and related humanitarian crisis.
Trump, in recent months, has repeatedly threatened to "take" Cuba and ramped up the 65-year US embargo against the country, including by imposing an oil blockade—disrupting food supplies, healthcare, education, transportation, and more—and issuing a May executive order that Rubio cited in his statement about the sanctions against Union Cuba-Petroleo (CUPET).
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a longtime advocate of regime change on the island, claimed Thursday "that like every resource on the island, energy has long been weaponized by Cuba's communist government as a tool of both repression and self-serving regime kleptocracy."
"While the Cuban people have suffered fuel shortages and blackouts because of decades of under-investment in critical infrastructure," Rubio continued, "Cuba's communist leaders have diverted energy resources to line their own pockets: reselling countless barrels of scarce energy on the secondary market, hoarding energy supplies for its military, intelligence, and repressive forces, and rationing energy as a tool of social control."
Warning of the new sanctions' likely impact, William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert at American University in the United States, told The Associated Press: "It appears that they're all in on strangling the Cuban economy... Their policy is a contradiction. They claim they don't want to create a humanitarian crisis, although that's exactly what they’re doing."
As some Florida Republicans in Congress celebrated the secretary of state's announcement, Cuban officials fired back, with Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, taking aim at Rubio in a social media post.
"The US regime's secretary of state, driven by ambitions of conquest, presidential aspirations, and the vengeful sentiments of the elitist clique that propelled his political career, now further tightens the economic and energy stranglehold against Cuba," he wrote in Spanish. "To justify it, he does not resort to excuses prepared by his State Department, but to the usual crude lies, the most aggressive, uncouth, and rabid among Cuba's enemies."
Ernesto Soberón, Cuba's permanent representative to the United Nations, accused Rubio of "peddling crude lies" while the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, "mindlessly parrots the claim that the blockade does not exist and is, therefore, not primarily responsible for the suffering of the Cuban people."
"The cynicism of top US officials knows no bounds," Soberón said. "Stop the collective punishment of the Cuban people."
This week alone, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and thousands of Italian medical professionals have spoken out against the US blockade of Cuba.
“The fuel restrictions imposed since early 2026 and recent tightening of extraterritorial sanctions, taken together, are directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable," said Türk. "Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable. These sanctions must be lifted immediately."
The Trump administration's targeting of CUPET came a week after it sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, his wife, and three other individuals.
"We just want them to be a nicely run country," Trump told journalists in the Oval Office last week, when asked whether those sanctions were meant to accelerate Cuba's collapse. "The country is starving, and it's got no energy, it's got no oil, it's got no money, it's got nothing. It's got a beautiful piece of land. You could have beautiful resorts."
Trump said that Cuba had already "sort of collapsed" and "we're going to handle that as soon as we've finished" military operations in Iran. He added, "I like to do one thing at a time."
Earlier this week, Elena Gutiérrez, a Mexican American activist at Global Exchange, wrote for Foreign Policy In Focus about returning from three trips to the island this year "with my heart a little more broken, but also with a stronger conviction that we need to defend Cuba."
"But can US citizens truly stop the madness their own empire imposes on them and on the rest of the world? Let us hope so, because only the people of the United States—and no one else—can carry out the transformations their own country needs," according to Gutiérrez. "Only then will Cuba, the United States, Mexico, and the rest of the world be free."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's Iran War Slowing Global Economic Growth to Lowest Level Since Pandemic: World Bank
"For light at the end of the tunnel, you’d have to look to the 2030s," says the World Bank's chief economist.
Jun 11, 2026
The World Bank on Thursday lowered its global growth forecast for the remainder of 2026 as the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran drives up energy prices, inflation, and the cost of debt.
"The global economy is facing another major shock," the World Bank's latest biannual Global Economic Prospects report states. "The conflict in the Middle East has triggered sharp increases in energy prices, renewed inflationary pressures, and fueled expectations of tighter monetary policy."
"Global growth is projected to slow to 2.5% in 2026, from 2.9% in 2025—the lowest rate since the Covid-19 pandemic—amid weaker prospects for economies dependent on energy imports and those directly affected by hostilities," the report continues. "Activity is expected to firm in 2027-28 as energy supplies recover, monetary easing resumes, and trade strengthens."
The Iran War has resulted in the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 30% of the world’s fertilizer and 20% of its oil previously passed. In addition to increasing the risk of a global food crisis, the strait’s closure has sent fuel and fertilizer prices soaring, with US farm diesel costing nearly 50% more than it did on the war’s eve in February and various fertilizer products spiking by between one-quarter and one-half.
The war has affected the economies of countries far removed from Iran, as the World Bank reports forecasts that "growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is expected to slow to 3.6% this year."
"The level of per capita income across EMDEs excluding China and India, relative to advanced economies, is not expected to return to the pre-pandemic level until after 2028, implying nearly a decade of lost income convergence," the international financial institution predicted.
World Bank Group president Ajay Banga said in a statement Thursday that "developing countries have faced a series of challenges over the last decade."
“The impact differs by country, but the basic test is the same: Protect people and preserve stability today, without giving up on growth and jobs tomorrow," Banga added. "In response to the current shock, we are providing liquidity where it is needed now—and we are ready with additional financing, guarantees, and private-sector solutions if pressures deepen. Our job is to help countries steady the ship, keep reforms moving, and emerge stronger on the other side.”
The bank said in April that up to $100 billion would be made available over the next 15 months for nations suffering the most acute economic shocks caused by the war.
As US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly undermine efforts to end the war, the World Bank cautions that the global economic outlook "remains skewed to the downside."
“A renewed escalation of hostilities or more prolonged disruptions to commodity flows could further raise commodity prices, intensify inflationary pressures and food insecurity, trigger financial stress, and lower growth,” the bank's report warns.
In his foreword to the new Global Economic Prospects report, World Bank Group chief economist Indermit Gill warned that "barring a miracle, the 2020s will prove to be what their ominous opening foreshadowed: a lost decade—not just for a couple of outliers, but for dozens of developing economies.'"
"Amid one of the densest clusters of global shocks since the 1970s, nearly 1 out of every 2 developing economies has failed since 2019 to advance on the most rudimentary promise of development: narrowing the income gap with the world’s most prosperous economies," Gill added. "For light at the end of the tunnel, you’d have to look to the 2030s."
Keep ReadingShow Less
88 Corporations That Paid No US Federal Income Tax in 2025 Spent $852 Million on Recent Lobbying, Elections
"The result," said the author of a new Public Citizen analysis, "is a self-reinforcing loop where corporate cash buys policy, and policy pays cash back."
Jun 11, 2026
c
Eighty-eight corporations that paid no federal income tax last year spent roughly $852 million on US campaign contributions and lobbying during recent election cycles, a report published Thursday revealed.
The report, "The Current Price of Zero," was authored by Eileen O'Grady, a researcher at Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. The publication draws upon an analysis published in April by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) showing that at least 88 of the nation’s largest companies paid no federal corporate income tax in fiscal year 2025, despite reporting combined US pretax income of around $105 billion.
"Using data from OpenSecrets, which compiles and publishes campaign finance and lobbying data, we found that from the 2020 election cycle through the 2024 cycle, these 88 companies have spent nearly $852 million on lobbying and campaign contributions," O'Grady wrote. "We highlight the companies that spent the most money on lobbying, hired the most lobbyists, lobbied specifically on tax issues, and contributed the most cash to political campaigns."
The federal corporate income tax rate is 21%, indicating that the 88 companies in the report dodged a combined $22.1 billion in taxes last year. Additionally, they received $4.7 billion in tax rebates, bringing their total tax breaks to approximately $26.7 billion.
“The largest and richest corporations in the country are paying zero in federal income tax, and that is a slap in the face to the American taxpayers who are struggling to afford necessities like groceries and healthcare,” O’Grady said in a statement.
"Meanwhile, these companies are spending money that could have gone to the public good on lobbying for even more special advantages and tax breaks," she added. "In this backwards, cash-fueled system, the deck is being stacked ever higher in favor of corporations, and against working people.”
The report's key findings include:
- The 88 corporations that paid no federal corporate income tax in 2025 spent $712 million on lobbying and $140 million on campaign contributions over the last three election cycles;
- Comparing the taxes the corporations saved against the cost of their political spending, they collectively made a 3,000% return on investment;
- Coinbase Global spent the most of any company—$89 million—followed by CVS Health ($66 million), Honeywell International ($56 million), American Electric Power ($47 million), and Duke Energy ($35 million);
- On average each year, these companies together have sent 1,119 lobbyists to influence the federal government, including on tax issues and legislation that changed the tax code in favor of corporate giveaways; and
- Since the beginning of 2025, these companies have collectively laid off at least 21,200 workers and announced plans to lay off thousands more.
"Our findings suggest that while Republicans lawmakers rewrote the tax code to enshrine massive giveaways to wealthy corporations, those same corporate tax dodgers poured millions into lobbying and political campaigns that yielded further tax breaks, which in turn has bankrolled even more political influence," O'Grady wrote. "The result is a self-reinforcing loop where corporate cash buys policy, and policy pays cash back."
The report singles out two related pieces of legislation—President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed into law by Trump last July 4—which enabled "several common strategies the companies used to get tax breaks and rebates."
"The most commonly used corporate tax giveaway, accelerated depreciation, enabled more than half of the companies to collectively avoid $11.4 billion in taxes by allowing them to write off capital investments immediately," O'Grady noted.
"In addition, a tax break supercharged under the Big Ugly Law allowed more than 30 companies to immediately write off research and development expenses, which alone netted them at least $4.4 billion in savings," she added, using a common liberal epithet for the OBBBA.
Since the US Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling—which affirmed that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the First Amendment—nearly $20 billion has been spent on US presidential elections and more than $53 billion on congressional races, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. Spending on 2024 congressional races was double 2010 levels, while presidential campaign contributions were more than 50% higher in 2024 than in 2008, the last election before Citizens United.
Ultrawealthy and corporate megadonors played a critical role in Trump’s 2024 victory. Fossil fuel interests spent more than $445 million during the 2024 election cycle on campaign donations, lobbying, and other efforts to elect Trump and his Republican allies, plus pass policies that benefit their climate-wrecking businesses. Artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency are fast emerging as some of the most prolific lobbyists. Trump and Republicans in Congress have promoted policies and legislation boosting these sectors and shielding them from government regulation.
Elon Musk—the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and majority owner of X who could soon become the world's first trillionaire—is the most prominent of the numerous Trump donors who have been rewarded with Cabinet nominations and other key appointments in “an administration dominated by billionaires and corporate interests,” as Americans for Tax Fairness executive director David Kass described it.
O'Grady wrote that "corporate tax dodgers spend lavishly on lobbying and campaign contributions that feed into more tax breaks, which in turn fund even more political spending on policies that serve to pad corporate profits—and the cycle continues."
To remedy this, the report asserts: "It is imperative that Congress undo the Republican tax giveaways to corporations like bonus depreciation and research and development write-offs. In addition, the corporate rate must be increased to at least the 35% rate that stood before the 2017 law."
"Corporations should not be able to deduct multimillion-dollar bonuses. And Congress must prevent multinational corporations from avoiding taxes by booking profits in offshore subsidiaries by equalizing the domestic and international tax rates," the publication concludes. "With these and other reforms to our tax code, our nation could have more than enough revenue to breinvest in American communities and make life more affordable for everyone. It’s time to finally put people over corporate profits."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular