One characteristic shared by the entire financial system is corporate social irresponsibility. In Spain, irresponsible practices are unfortunately widespread in the business community, which, rather than adopting a policy of corporate social responsibility, acts to the detriment of the environment, impairs the lives of communities and peoples in other countries and encourages conflicts and wars around the world through perverse activities such as the arms production. BBVA is no exception as it acts:

–Irresponsibly through its participation in military industries as stockholder in companies supplying the defence sector as indicated in the Report/Manifesto.

–Irresponsibly against the environment by financing heavily polluting business projects such as the heavy crude oil pipeline in Ecuador or ENCE’s huge cellulose plant in Uruguay.

–Irresponsibly against the countries of the South through the alleged buying of favours from their leaders or by laundering money of dubious origin.

Militarism, war, environmental degradation, North-South trade and the external debt which is strangling the non-industrialised countries are the main causes of the inequalities which keep two-thirds of humanity in poverty. As organisations working for a socially more just world we, the sponsors of the  Manifesto, believe that the best way of eradicating the suffering produced by war is to stop “preparing for it” through the manufacture of arms, that the best way to prevent corruption in countries of the South is not to corrupt their government officials and that the best way to hinder the work of international criminal networks is to abolish bank secrecy and banking havens. Unfortunately BBVA is not an isolated case on the financial scene, and for this reason among our demands we are calling on the entire Spanish financial and banking system to refrain from participation in the war industry.