Plantations Et Huileries du Congo sa (PHC) #36439

Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO)

Tertiary investor/lender

21/12/2015

DEG, BIO, EAIF and FMO provide a long term loan facility in an amount of up to USD 49 million (DEG: USD 16.5 million, BIO: USD 11 million, EAIF: USD 5 million, FMO: USD 16.5 million). The Development Finance Institutions (DFI) BIO of Belgium, CDC of the UK, DEG of Germany and FMO from the Netherlands have announced today that they will cease to be Lenders to PHC, the operating company of three longstanding palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The group of DFIs have sold their respective debt interests to Maku Holdings, an affiliate of Kuramo Capital Management. The development banks cancelled 80% of PHC's debt and wrote off all of their shares in Feronia. On February 22, 2022, the last bits of their debt interests were sold for an undisclosed sum to Maku Holdings, an affiliate of Kuramo Capital.

Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Parent company

Straight KKM 2 Limited (KKM)

Parent company

FMO (Netherlands Development Finance Company)

Tertiary investor/lender

21/12/2015

DEG, BIO, EAIF and FMO provide a long term loan facility in an amount of up to USD 49 million (DEG: USD 16.5 million, BIO: USD 11 million, EAIF: USD 5 million, FMO: USD 16.5 million). On February 22, 2022, development banks – BIO of Belgium, CDC of the UK, DEG of Germany and FMO from the Netherlands – announced that they had sold off their remaining financial interests in Plantation et Huileries du Congo (PHC), the scandal-plagued company holding over 100,000 ha of concessions for oil palm plantations in the DR Congo. It follows the exit of the French development bank Proparco earlier in 2021. This marks the end of a nine year period in which a consortium of many of the world's largest development banks spent over US$150 million propping up a company that acquired its land concessions through a Belgian colonial era land grab and that was involved in gross human rights violations and environmental crimes both before and during the development banks investments. It constitutes one of the most shocking examples of development bank complicity in the impoverishment, dispossession and repression of local communities in the global South.