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Credit Suisse puts jungle destroyer on the stock exchange
Diet Simon - 20.02.2007 02:43
The Swiss bank Credit Suisse is launching the Malaysian timber firm Samling on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Also involved in the float are the British HSBC and the Australian Macquarie Bank.
The sale of stock will begin on 23 February, trading starts officially on 7 March. Samling expects the float to give it 280 million US dollars which it wants to use to keep cutting down forests and repay debts.
The preparation of stock exchange launches is one of the most lucrative businesses of investment banks. Banking industry experts expect the Samling launch to earn Credit Suisse several million Swiss francs.
The German group Rettet den Regenwald (Save the Rain Forest) is asking for people to join protests from its website:
 http://www.regenwald.org
A Swiss rain forest protector, Bruno Manser, who lived for four years with jungle nomads in Sarawak, disappeared without a trace on his last visit there in May 2000 and was officially declared lost in March 2005.
His brother, Erich Manser, has travelled in the Borneo jungles on several expeditions to search for Bruno. On his last trip he crossed paths incognito with the head of the Samling Group.
“I have seen myself how ghastly the destruction wrought by Samling in the jungle is.”
Bruno Manser’s engagement is the subject of a documentary film, “Bruno Manser – Laki Penan” which starts showing in Swiss cinemas in April.
Since the protest action started on 15 February, 3,573 people have taken part.
The environment and human rights advocacy group Bruno Manser Fonds of Basle, Switzerland, reports:
Based in the Malaysian town Miri (federal state of Sarawak) on Borneo, the Samling group is one of the biggest Malaysian timber companies and plays a decisive part in the ongoing worldwide destruction of tropical rain forests. Samling currently holds about four million hectares of timber concessions in Malaysia, Guyana, China and New Zealand and in the past was involved in illegal logging in Cambodia and Papua New Guinea.
Samling is especially in the focus of criticism in the Malaysian federal state of Sarawak, where the firm is responsible for the deforestation of a large part of the jungles inhabited by the indigenous Penan people. On 7 Februarys 2007 Malaysian police, at the behest of Samling, cleared away a blockade of a logging road erected by Penans near Long Benali on the upper reach of the Baram River. Also in Sarawak, Samling bulldozers are destroying the habitat of the nomad group of Chief Along Sega, with whom the Swiss rain forest protector Bruno Manser lived for four years.
In South America, too, Samling breaches fundamental ecological and social standards in logging rain forest. Thus the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in January 2007 withdrew from the Samling Group the certification of a timber concession of 570,000 hectares in Guyana because of gross violations of the certification conditions.
In contrast with other international banks, Credit Suisse has no transparent standards for dealing with environmental and human rights issues. By organising the stock exchange launch of a firm that destroys rain forest and violates the rights of indigenous communities the bank shares the guilt. This example shows that Credit Suisse urgently needs comprehensive standards for safeguarding human rights and preserving the environment.
The Bruno Manser Fund and the Declaration of Berne demand of Credit Suisse that it withdraw from organising the stock launch of the Malaysian Samling Group and break off its business ties with Samling.
Under the report on Samling there is a window that says: “I call on Credit Suisse to withdraw from organising the stock exchange launch of the Malaysian Samling Group and to break off its business relationship with Samling.“
IF UNDER THAT YOU ENTER YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS YOU WILL BE PLACED ON A LIST OF SIGNATURES WHICH THEY WILL SEND TO Credit Suisse.
Old and new chairman of the supervisory board:
 oswald.gruebel@credit-suisse.com
Other members:
brady.dougan@credit-suisse.com
walter.kielholz@credit-suisse.com
hans-ulrich.doerig@credit-suisse.com
For more information:
On Samling:
Bruno Manser Fonds
Heuberg 25
4051 Basel
+41 61 261 94 74
E-mail: info@bmf.ch
Internet: www.bmf.ch
On the role of Credit Suisse:
Declaration of Berne
Quellenstr. 25
Postfach 1327
8031 Zürich
+41 79 478 91 94
E-mail: info@evb.ch
Internet: www.evb.org
 Website: http://www.regenwald.org
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