April, 26 2022, 03:48pm EDT
For Immediate Release
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
Key Republican's $500 Billion 'Red Line' for Medicaid Cuts Slammed as Cruel Farce
"If your 'red line' is taking away healthcare from millions of people, then you don't have a red line."
Apr 30, 2025
A key House Republican said Tuesday that he would be unwilling to accept more than $500 billion in Medicaid cuts in the GOP's emerging reconciliation package, a "red line" that drew swift mockery and condemnation from healthcare campaigners.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is seen as a critical swing vote in the narrowly controlled Republican House, toldPolitico that his ceiling for Medicaid cuts over the next decade is a half-trillion dollars—a message he has privately delivered to President Donald Trump's White House.
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement Tuesday that a $500 billion cut to Medicaid "is not at all moderate, but massive—the biggest cut in the history of Medicaid, one that would force millions of Americans to lose coverage."
"Slashing Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars would force states like Nebraska to make the unholy choice to drop people from coverage, cut benefits, and/or cut payments to the providers we all rely on, or otherwise raise taxes," said Wright. "Medicaid cuts would be another wrecking ball to the health system and to the economy."
The Century Foundation has estimated that cutting federal Medicaid funding by $500 billion over a 10-year period would strip health coverage from more than 18 million children and more than 2 million adults with disabilities.
"If your 'red line' is taking away healthcare from millions of people, then you don't have a red line," said Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the advocacy coalition Unrig Our Economy.
"Not one dollar should be cut from Medicaid to pay for one dollar of tax breaks for the rich."
Bacon also made clear Tuesday that he would support draconian changes to Medicaid that have been tried with disastrous results at the state level.
"They should be seeking the skill sets for better jobs," Bacon said in support of adding work requirements to Medicaid, despite an abundance of evidence showing that such mandates succeed only at booting people from the program, not increasing employment. (Most Medicaid recipients who are able to work already do.)
Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, said in a statement that "as the GOP drafts their devastating budget, one thing remains true: Republicans in Congress want to make the largest Medicaid cuts in history to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans."
"Whether it's a trillion dollars, half a trillion, or hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts, no member of Congress can justify ripping healthcare away from some of the most vulnerable Americans to give tax breaks to the wealthy," said Woodhouse. "Not one dollar should be cut from Medicaid to pay for one dollar of tax breaks for the rich."
The "moderate" $500 billion Medicaid cut being pitched here would finance a $500 billion tax cut for millionaire business owners and the heirs of estates worth over $28 million per couple. There is nothing moderate about cutting low-income Americans' health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
[image or embed]
— Brendan Duke (@brendanvduke.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Congressional Republicans have previously backed budget plans that would allow $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, as well as massive reductions in spending on federal nutrition assistance.
But the GOP push for Medicaid cuts to pay for another round of tax breaks that would largely benefit the wealthy has sparked outrage nationwide, and it appears some Republicans are feeling the pressure from constituents.
Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), whose district has the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in the House GOP conference, raised concerns about deep Medicaid cuts in an interview with Politico on Tuesday.
But like Bacon, Valadao said he was open to proposals that experts say would bring disastrous consequences for Medicaid recipients. Politico noted that the California Republican "is leaving the door open to capping the overall funding for certain beneficiaries in the 41 states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act."
Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy's Center for Children and Families, warned earlier this week that the per-capita funding cap Republicans are considering should "be viewed as just another proposal to sharply shift expansion costs to states by lowering the effective expansion matching rates, with the intent of undermining and eventually repealing the Medicaid expansion."
"That, in turn, would take away coverage from nearly 21 million low-income parents, people with disabilities, near-elderly adults, and others," Park wrote. "It would also have significant adverse effects on the children of expansion adults: Research shows that the Medicaid expansion increases enrollment among eligible children and therefore reduces the number of uninsured children."
"And, of course, it would also deter the 10 remaining non-expansion states from taking up the expansion in the future," he added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Amazon Won't Display Tariff Costs After Trump Whines to Bezos
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
Apr 29, 2025
Amazon said Tuesday that it would not display tariff costs next to products on its website after U.S. President Donald Trump called the e-commerce giant's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to complain about the reported plan.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with Amazon's supposed plan, Punchbowl Newsreported that "the shopping site will display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs—right next to the product's total listed price."
Many Amazon products come from China. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Sunday that "there is a path" to a tariff deal with the Chinese government, Trump has recently caused global economic alarm by hitting the country with a 145% tax and imposing a 10% minimum for other nations.
According toCNN, which spoke with two senior White House officials on Tuesday, Trump's call to Bezos "came shortly after one of the senior officials phoned the president to inform him of the story" from Punchbowl.
"Of course he was pissed," one officials said of Trump. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"
Asked about how the call with Bezos went, Trump told reporters: "Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing, and he's a good guy."
Earlier Tuesday, during a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon's reported plan "a hostile and political act," and said that "this is another reason why Americans should buy American."
Leavitt also asked why Amazon didn't have such displays during the Biden administration and held up a printed version of a 2021 Reutersreport about the company's "compliance with the Chinese government edict" to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews in China, allegedly prompted by negative feedback left on a collection President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
Asked whether Bezos is "still a Trump supporter," Leavitt said that she "will not speak to" the president's relationship with him.
As CNBCdetailed Tuesday:
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
"The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products," the spokesperson said. "This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties."
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was "never approved" and is "not going to happen."
In response to Bloomberg also reporting on Amazon's claim that tariff displays were never under consideration for the company's main site, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote on social media Tuesday, "Good move."
Before Amazon publicly killed any plans for showing consumers the costs from Trump's import taxes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor Tuesday that companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
"I urge more companies, particularly national retailers that compete with Amazon, to adopt this practice. If Amazon has the courage to display why prices are going up because of tariffs, so should all of our other national retailers who compete with them. And I am calling on them to do it now," he said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Tuesday framed the whole incident as an example of how "Trump has created a government by and for the billionaires," declaring: "If anyone ever doubted that Trump, and Musk, and Bezos, and the billionaires are all [on] one team, just look at what happened at Amazon today. Bezos immediately caved and walked back a plan to tell Americans how much Trump's tariffs are costing them."
Casar also claimed Bezos wants "big tax cuts and sweatheart deals," and pointed to Amazon's Prime Video paying $40 million to license a documentary about the life of First Lady Melania Trump. In addition to the film agreement, Bezos has come under fire for Amazon's $1 million donation to the president's inauguration fund.
As the owner of
The Washington Post, Bezos—the world's second-richest person, after Trump adviser Elon Musk—also faced intense criticism for blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of the president's 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris, and demanding its opinion page advocate for "personal liberties and free markets."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Medicare for All, Says Sanders, Would Show American People 'Government Is Listening to Them'
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts," said one nurse and union leader. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Apr 29, 2025
On Tuesday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan reintroduced the Medicare for All Act, re-upping the legislative quest to enact a single-payer healthcare system even as the bill faces little chance of advancing in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare providers, and workers from across the country joined the lawmakers for a press conference focused on the bill's reintroduction in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
"We have the radical idea of putting healthcare dollars into healthcare, not into profiteering or bureaucracy," said Sanders during the press conference. "A simple healthcare system, which is what we are talking about, substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would also make life a lot easier, not just for patients, but for nurses" and other healthcare providers, he continued.
"So let us stand together," Sanders told the crowd. "Let us do what the American people want and let us transform this country. And when we pass Medicare for All, it's not only about improving healthcare for all our people—it's doing something else. It's telling the American people that, finally, the American government is listening to them."
Under Medicare for All, the government would pay for all healthcare services, including dental, vision, prescription drugs, and other care.
"It is a travesty when 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are drowning in medical debt in the richest nation on Earth," said Jayapal in a statement on Tuesday.
In 2020, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that a single-payer program like Medicare for All would save Americans more than $450 billion and would likely prevent 68,000 deaths every year. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system that resembles Medicare for All would yield some $650 billion in savings in 2030.
Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of registered nurses, were also at the press conference on Tuesday.
In a statement, the group highlighted that the bill comes at a critical time, given GOP-led threats to programs like Medicaid.
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts and attacks so that we become too demoralized and overwhelmed to move forward," said Bonnie Castillo, registered nurse and executive director of NNU. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Per Sanders' office, the legislation has 104 co-sponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate, which is an increase from the previous Congress.
A poll from Gallup released in 2023 found that 7 in 10 Democrats support a government-run healthcare system. The poll also found that across the political spectrum, 57% of respondents believe the government should ensure all people have healthcare coverage.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular