Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mundiale (Italy), Friends of the Earth (France), Netwerk Vlaanderen (Belgium), Platform (UK), SETEM (Spain) and Urgewald (Germany) expose investments in harmful practices and companies of thirteen large European banks in this new website.  Despite of the banking crisis,  financial institutions continue to do harmful investments in a sphere of secrecy. To expose banks´ secrets, activists ‘undressed the banks’ by staging parallel theatrical activities in the main European capitals. 

On 20 March 2007 the Belgian parliament unanimously approved a law banning investments in cluster munitions and anti-personnel mines. Two years later, the law is still being breached. Fortis, Dexia, Delta Lloyd, Citibank and Bank Degroof offer funds that invest in producers of cluster munitions, according to new research from Netwerk Vlaanderen. For this reason, peace organisations and concerned investors have sent a bailiff to Belgian finance minister Reynders. As long as he has not drawn up an essential implementing decree that makes the law operational, individuals and institutions run the risk of unwittingly breaching the law.

Customers of BNP Paribas run a very high risk of harmful investments. This is revealed in new research that forms part of the "Banking Secrets" campaign of Netwerk Vlaanderen. The French bank owns or manages 657 million dollars in shares of ten companies that harm people and the environment, such as mining company Barrick Gold and Freeport McMoran. Netwerk Vlaanderen conducted research into the harmful investments made by AXA, Citibank, Dexia, Deutsche Bank, ING, KBC and Triodos Bank regarding environment, peace, freedom & democracy and decent working conditions. The results are disappointing.

BELSIF, the ‘Belgian Sustainable and Socially Responsible Investment Forum’ organizes a session about The Ethical aspects of Microfinance in Brussels, on Wednesday 1th of April.BELSIF is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is to stimulate, promote and support all types of sustainable and socially responsible investments (SRI). Netwerk Vlaanderen is member of the forum. You are welcome to join the session. Attendance is free, but please register before 25th March by sending an e-mail to info@belsif.

As G20 finance ministers meet in London to discuss how to rescue the global financial system and prevent the next disaster, a new report by anti-corruption NGO Global Witness shows how some of the world’s biggest banks have been dealing with some of the world’s most corrupt regimes.