Dear Sirs!
Experts estimate that by 2025 populations of 48 countries, or 3
billion people, will face a deficit of fresh water. Today 2 billion
people in 80 countries already do not have sufficient access to
drinking.
water. At the same time fresh water contained in glaciers and
icebergs not only remains inaccessible, but may be lost in the near
future due to the global rise in ocean temperatures. Given these
circumstances, it is impossible to overestimate the role of Lake
Baikal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as a unique, natural
water-producing factory that constantly replenishes a reservoir
containing more than 20 percent of the world`s liquid fresh water
and more than 80 percent of Russia`s fresh water.
In 2006 your principled stand on environmentally harmful
investment projects saved Lake Baikal from the deadly threat of the
Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline. Unfortunately, today
Baikal`s unique ecosystem is yet again under threat of complete
destruction by unethical and irresponsible business, specifically
by an oligarch who wields unlimited influence over the Russian
state`s thoroughly corrupt administrative structures.
Until it came to a stop in October 2008, the Baikalsk Pulp and
Paper Mill (BPPM) was the only industrial polluter to discharge
dangerous toxic wastes directly into Lake Baikal and surrounding
atmosphere. On January 13, 2010 the Russian government issued
Federal Resolution No. 1, which allows BPPM not only to resume its
harmful operations, but to work without a closed wastewater cycle,
previously required by law.
BPPM daily discharged up to 200 thousand tons of toxic liquid
wastes containing poisonous phenols and organic sulphur compounds
into Lake Baikal, and spewed thousands of tons of methyl mercaptan
and carbon bisulfide into the air. In 2002 BPPM was acquired by
Continental Management, a company that belongs to Basic Element, a
financial holding owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Along
with the SUAL aluminum factory, Selenginsky Pulp and Paper Mill,
and other companies in the Baikal region owned by Basic Element,
BPPM engaged in ecological terrorism against local people and Lake
Baikal`s ecosystem.
Financial impropriety of Mr. Deripaska`s Continental Management
has been confirmed, in essence, as far back as December 2004 by
Kristalina Georgieva, the World Bank`s country director for Russia,
"in connection with an on-going practice of establishing low
selling prices for cellulose, as a result of which another division
of Continental Management acts as a a profit-receiving center." For
example, buyers of BMMP production addressed their payments to
«Kensington Securites and Investments Ltd», a company registered in
the British Virgin Islands offshore zone. The very fact that an
offshore company was involved in this process clearly points to tax
evasion concerning a part of the profits.
But as Continental Management and Rusal squeeze everything
possible from their factories, they invest next to nothing into
repair, maintenance and upgrade of equipment that dates to 1960s,
leading to serious accidents at their plants. Just in January and
February of this year serious accidents took place at the BPPM and
at the SUAL-PM aluminum smelter in the town of Shelehov. The latter
involved a fire and human fatalities.
Ever-increasing toxic and poisonous emissions from Mr.
Deripaska`s factories can at any point irreversibly change the
quality of water in Lake Baikal, a lake that could provide almost
the entire population of our planet with clean water in the future.
In your countries this kind of unethical and irresponsible
business, profiting at the expense of environment and human health,
would have been stopped with fines and criminal prosecutions a long
time ago. Understanding this too well, Mr. Deripaska has been
trying to escape responsibility for his longstanding environmental
crimes, through alleged sale or transfer of his BPPM shares to
companies affiliated with Continental Management that belong to his
junior partner, a de facto Deripaska employee.
Given this, Baikal Movement appeals to all responsible heads of
state who respect international environmental legal norms, to
demand consistent fulfillment of its international environmental
obligations from the Russian Government. We also urge you to demand
that the Russian Government enforce its own laws, such as the Law
on Protection of Lake Baikal, to halt harmful BPPM operations,
which since the mill`s re-opening have already polluted Lake Baikal
and the water treatment systems of Baikalsk with industrial
effluent.
We call on all international banking and business communities
that respect the Equator Principles, to follow the World Bank in
renouncing all joint projects with any corporations and companies
that belong to Oleg Deripaska, including Basic Element, Continental
Management, and Rusal. In the case of BPPM these companies have
demonstrated their willingness to blackmail the populace, deceive
and provoke the public, and misinform the authorities. We ask you
to consider that these companies will be paying back your credits
or distributing common profits at the cost of destruction of Lake
Baikal, ecocide of Siberian peoples, depriving millions of people
on this planet of a chance to survive the water deficit that will
result from global climate change, and making you unwilling
accomplices in a crime of planetary proportions.
The Baikal Movement