LONDON – Indigenous leaders from the Wampis nation in Peru are urging lawmakers in the House of Commons in London to ban international banks’ support for Amazon oil activities that they say are harming their ancestral rainforests.

UK-based HSBC, JPMorgan Chase in the US and Santander in Spain helped finance state-owned oil company Petroperu as it sought to upgrade a coastal refinery. The plant processes crude oil from a 1,094 kilometer pipeline that runs through the rainforest.

Over the past decade, dozens of leaks have occurred along the pipeline.

After the meetings, Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick raised the issue in the House of Lords and said in an interview on Friday that the banks’ actions were “deplorable”.

“We have been conserving our forest for more than 7,000 years,” Pamuk Teófilo Kukush Pati, a Wampis leader, told the Associated Press.

Today, their fishing waters are seriously polluted, he said, and “there is no guarantee of life…we are in a very serious situation.”

“Most alarming is the fact that we are discovering that various banks are financing Petroperu,” said Tsanim Evaristo Wajai Asamat, another Wampis leader. “And these things are happening all over the Amazon.”

Banks acted as “bookrunners” in a $1 billion bond offering for refinery work in 2021, first reported by the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism United, a non-profit organization. When banks act as bookrunners, they advertise the bonds to their customers and use their reputation to give investors confidence. Financial data provider Dealogic estimates that each bank collected $583,000 in fees.

A Santander Bank spokeswoman said by email that the company follows all relevant environmental regulations and carries out careful analysis before supporting companies that operate in the Amazon. A JPMorgan spokeswoman said indigenous rights are a fundamental consideration across their business. An HSBC spokeswoman said in a statement that it was imposing restrictions on supporting projects in the Amazon.

Over the past decade, there have been 89 leaks from the pipeline, Petroperu said in an email. Only two of these were caused by equipment failure, with the rest due to criminals or natural forces. Petroperu has spent more than $180 million to clean up oil spills over the past decade, it says.

More than 15,000 Wampis live across some 13,000 square kilometers of forests and wetlands in northern Peru. Their territory is home to hundreds of species of rare fish and birds.

The people made headlines in 2015 when they declared self-government, in part to protect their environment. The government of Peru does not recognize it.

According to Petroperu’s bond prospectus for the refinery project, which provides transparency to investors, bond buyers faced financial risks “related to the effects of oil leaks on local and indigenous communities.” There could be protests, fines, compensation and negative publicity, he warns, and Indigenous communities have “taken hostile action against our facilities and facilities on several occasions.”

The leaflet also indicated that criminal investigations were being carried out by Peruvian prosecutors into oil spills, involving former Petroperu executives. Petroperu has since denied that people at its management level are under investigation, saying two lower-level employees were among those of interest to prosecutors. The company said by email that it was cooperating with the investigation.

The year after the bond deal, in 2022, Peruvian regulators hit Petroperu with 66 fines, including for new oil spills along the pipeline. The three banks did business with Petroperu again last year, providing advice as the oil company sought to change the terms of its debt.

The Wampis are also unhappy with illegal logging and mining in their territory. They were joined in London by several delegations pushing for a bill that would make it a crime for British companies to harm the environment and threaten human rights.

Delegations from Colombia, Liberia and Mexico met Baroness Ritchie and then senior officials from the UK Foreign Office and the Department of the Environment.

“You need corporate law,” she said, “to make sure this stops.” This must be done with respect. You should respect people if you mine or do oil exploration in their country.

Jesús Javier Thomas González, from northern Mexico, spoke of a decade-long battle with a London Stock Exchange-listed mining company that he said had illegally occupied and devastated his land.

The company has “enormous economic and political influence in Mexico,” he said. In the UK, it’s a good corporate citizen, he said, “but in Mexico they behave in a different way.”

A UK government spokesperson said British businesses should always act to avoid environmental damage, and their approach to tackling those who fail to do so is constantly reviewed.

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Grattan was reported in Bogota, Colombia.

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