Swiss Village To Donate Glencore Xstrata Tax Receipts To Countries Exploited By Company
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Residents from the Swiss village of Hedingen, near Zurich, have decided to donate some 110,000 Swiss francs ($121,000) in taxes paid by Glencore Xstrata’s billionaire chief executive Ivan Glasenberg – to countries where the firm had been accused of exploiting people and resources, according to a report by The Guardian.
Residents from the Swiss village of Hedingen, near Zurich, have decided to donate some 110,000 Swiss francs ($121,000) in taxes paid by Glencore Xstrata’s billionaire chief executive Ivan Glasenberg – to countries where the firm had been accused of exploiting people and resources, according to a report by The Guardian.
The people of Hedingen voted 764 to 662 in favour of donating the money to overseas charities in South America and America after some villagers claimed that they did not want to take Glasenberg’s money because they considered it ‘tainted’.
Hedingen villagers had the option of donating the money to either local Swiss charities or to the ‘exploited’ countries. This came after the village received nearly $1.2 million in income taxes from Glasenberg as a result of Glencore’s flotation in London in 2011.
Samuel Schweizer, a member of the citizens’ committee that proposed the donation, told The Guardian that some villagers had felt obliged to give back some of the “extraordinary wealth to the people who should have received it in the beginning”.
[quote]”It is extraordinary that our small community got more than 1 million francs of extra tax money from Glencore extracting raw materials in a number of very poor countries, where it is accused of polluting, abusing labour and not paying much in taxes,” said Schweizer. “We had a unique opportunity to raise public awareness. We felt we must share this with the people who are suffering from the operations of Glencore.”[/quote]The neighbouring village of Rüschlikon is also planning to call a referendum to decide what to do with another $395 million it received from Glasenberg two years ago. Residents of Rüschlikon, already dubbed “the richest village in Switzerland”, last year voted down a motion to give some of the money to an African charity, but have faced pressure to reconsider its decision.
[quote]”We hope that people will open their eyes to the danger that raw material extraction will be the next reputational time bomb for Switzerland,” told Schweizer to The Guardian. “Political leaders have not learned anything from the disaster of [Switzerland’s role at the heart of the] banking industry.”[/quote]“We wish that Rüschlikon would act in the same way [as Hedingen],” he added.
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Ivan Glasenberg was ranked as the 175th richest man in the world by Forbes this year, with a net worth of about $6.7 billion. Last month, Glencore Xstrata pledged to improve its human rights record by signing a letter of intent for an initiative promising to prevent violations by security, military and police forces in the commodities sector.
