Press Release Global Action on ArcelorMittal ArcelorMittal’s polluting South African plant shortlisted for Public Eye Global Award in Davos at World Economic Forum Tuesday, 19th of January 2010 The Luxembourg steel giant ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steel company has been shortlisted along with five other [1] candidates for the Public Eye Global Award [2] to be held in Davos, Switzerland, on the 27th January – the opening day of the World Economic Forum. The company has been selected from over 40 nominees due to its heavily polluting operation in Vanderbijlpark, which is their biggest and most profitable operation in South Africa.  The nomination recognises the company’s toxic waste dumping; failure to clean up contamination in neighbourhoods around its steelworks; lobbying against stricter air pollution controls and withholding information from the public that will allow society to better understand the impact of the plant on their health and well-being. The general public can cast votes at www.publiceye.ch until 26th January. Samson Mokoena of the Vaal Environmental Justice Forum [3], a community organisation working with people living next to the Vanderbijlpark Plant calls on ArcelorMittal to respect South Africa’s new democracy: “ArcelorMittal knows what pollution they have caused, but they refuse to release this information to the people who have requested it.  This is a travesty of justice in a new South Africa, but Mr Mittal will not be touched because he advises our President on economic policy, thus he has protection for his polluting investment.” “The problems with ArcelorMittal go far beyond South Africa, with communities as far apart as Kazakhstan and Ohio in the US suffering similar problems with pollution”, added Sunita Dubey, groundWork US Co-ordinator of the Global Action on ArcelorMittal Coalition [4]. “The company’s Kazakh coal mines also have an appalling safety record, with 102 miners dying in accidents since 2004, it has been implicated in unduly influencing Liberian politicians with donations of four wheel drive vehicles and now it wants to build at least two mega-steelmills in India, depriving indigenous people of their ancestral land”. “With its CEO and largest shareholder, Lakshmi Mittal, being the world’s eighth richest person, you’d think the company would have money to clean up its act, yet in spite of ArcelorMittal receiving ten public loans for a total of more than USD 1.2 billion from the international financial institutions in the last ten years, we’ve yet to see any significant progress”, [5] added Pippa Gallop of CEE Bankwatch Network. “All we’ve heard for the last year is excuses about the financial crisis, but this doesn’t explain why the company has failed to even produce a decent Stakeholder Engagement Plan - costing virtually nothing - as part of its EBRD-financed project in Kazakhstan”. The Public Eye awards, organised by Greenpeace and the Berne Declaration, are a critical counterpoint to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. Organized since 2000, Public Eye reminds corporations with destructive business practices that actions have consequences, presenting ‘name and shame’ awards to the nastiest corporate players of the year and through these awards presents to the world the immoral nexus between corporate power and the political elite. Contacts: Sunita Dubey - Coordinator GAAM and groundWork US +1 617 233 3981 (United States) sunita@groundwork-usa.org Samson Mokoena – Coordinator of the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance +27 84 291 8510 (South Africa) samson.mokoena@gmail.com Bobby Peek – Director groundWork, Friends of the Earth, South Africa +27 82 464 1383 bobby@groundwork.org.za (South Africa) Pippa Gallop - Research Co-ordinator, CEE Bankwatch Network +385 99 755 9787 (Croatia) pippa.gallop@bankwatch.org Notes for editors: [1] The other shortlisted candidates for the People’s Award are: - the Royal Bank of Canada, for being the largest financier of the environmentally as well as socially disastrous oil sands extraction in  the Canadian province of Alberta. - GDF Suez of France, the driving force behind a huge hydroelectric plant on the Brazilian Madeira River that entails staggering environmental destruction and massive displacement of the indigenous population. - Farner PR of Switzerland, for infiltrating the anti-militarist Group for a Switzerland Without an Army on behalf of the arms industry. - Roche of Switzerland, for marketing and researching anti-organ-transplant-rejection drug Cell Cept in China, where over 90 percent of transplanted organs come from executed prisoners. - The International Olympic Committee, based in Switzerland, although technically an association not a corporation, has been nominated for awarding the 2010 Winter Games to Vancouver, Canada, causing the displacement of indigenous people around the venue and sacrificing vast areas of virgin landscapes for the construction of freeways and other infrastructure. Homelessness in the Vancouver region, particularly among First Nations peoples, has tripled since the awarding of the Games. [2] For more information see http://www.publiceye.ch/en/about/what-are-public-eye-awards/ [3] The Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA) is a non-racist, non-sexist, democratic alliance of empowered civil society organisations in the Vaal triangle, in South Africa who have the knowledge, expertise and mandate to represent the determination of the communities of the area to control and eliminate emissions to air and water that are harmful to themselves and the environment. [4] Global Action on ArcelorMittal (GAAM) is a network of community and environmental groups from around the world who are working to get ArcelorMittal to invest in pollution prevention and health and safety at its steel mills and coal and iron ore mines. Member groups are: Friends of the Earth Europe, CEE Bankwatch Network, GARDE-EPS (Czech Republic), Karaganda Ecological Museum (Kazkhstan), VEJA and groundWork (South Africa), Friends of the Earth Luxembourg, National Ecological Centre (Ukraine); Ohio Citizen Action (United States); Sustainable Development Institute/Friends of the Earth Liberia (Liberia) and groundWork US. [5] ArcelorMittal and its predecessor companies have received public loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Finance Corporation and the European Investment Bank. -- ========================== Pippa Gallop Research Co-ordinator CEE Bankwatch Network http://www.bankwatch.org Skype: pippa.gallop c/o Zelena akcija Frankopanska 1 pp.952 10 000 Zagreb Hrvatska/Croatia ----------------------------