The World Bank Is Supposed to Help the Poor. So Why Is it Bankrolling Oligarchs?

A mile north of the chaotic heart of downtown Rangoon, where electrical wires dangle haphazardly overhead and street vendors hawk roasted pig intestines, sits an upscale complex of 240 luxury residences overlooking the iconic Shwedagon Pagoda and a serene man-made lake. Marketed to wealthy expatriates and foreign businesspeople on extended stays in Burma's bustling commercial capital, the newly built Shangri-La Serviced Apartments advertise "idyllic luxury in a modern metropolis" and amenities including a swimming pool, 24-hour private security, maids quarters, and a limousine service. Signs in the lobby inform guests that the complex now offers the Cartoon Network and yoga classes.

The World Bank's Anti-Poverty Push Made These Controversial Tycoons Even Richer

A branch of the World Bank called the International Finance Corporation is tasked with helping the bank end extreme poverty and "boosting shared prosperity." Today,the IFC is a moneymaker for the rest of the World Bank and finances the private sector in developing countries via loans and direct investments. The beneficiaries of the IFC's largesse have included dozens of multi­national corporations and private enterprises that are owned or controlled by some of the world's richest people. Here are some of the IFCs most controversial beneficiaries:

Miguel Facussé Barjum Corp Dinant/Flickr

MIGUEL FACUSSÉ BARJUM

CORPORACIÓN DINANT

IFC INVESTMENT: $30 MILLION

The late Honduran oligarch, who died in June, founded a manufacturing giant that owns 20,000 acres of palm plantations in Bajo Aguán, Honduras.Described by the Los Angeles Times as "colorful" and "often ruthless," Facussé presided over a company that has been dogged by allegations of using a private security force to forcibly evict families from the land near its plantations.

Leaked Survey: World Bank A Place Of 'Fear And Retaliation'

Many World Bank Group employees complain the bank’s managers are shutting down internal debate and ruling by fear, according to a confidential survey obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The Huffington Post.

“The World Bank has evolved into a place of fear and retaliation,” one employee said, according to a 163-page compilation of open-ended comments that were submitted last year as part of an in-house bank survey. “Intellectual debate is no longer welcome. Management is inept and there is no captain in this ship. Senior management does not know its own organization ... only fear, fear, fear.”

Gold Rush -- How The World Bank Is Financing Environmental Destruction

LA PAJUELA, Peru — It started as just another farm chore for Elvira Flores, a teenage shepherd in the northern Andean highlands.

On Sept. 8, 2013, Flores drove her flock across a dirt road that crosses her family’s rocky green fields and down to a stream.

After the sheep drank their fill, something went wrong.

Burned Out - World Bank Projects Leave Trail Of Misery Around Globe

Gladys Chepkemoi was weeding potatoes in her garden the day the men came to burn down her house.

After her mother-in-law told her that rangers from the Kenya Forest Service were on their way, Chepkemoi strapped her 1-year-old son on her back and hurried to her thatched-roofed home. She grabbed two tins of corn, blankets, plates and cooking pans, and hid in a thicket.

She watched, she said, as the green-uniformed rangers set her house ablaze.

World Bank breaks its own rules as millions lose land and livelihoods

The World Bank has repeatedly violated its own policies on protecting the rights of indigenous people by funding projects that resulted in nearly 3.4 million slum-dwellers, farmers and villagers losing their land or having their livelihoods damaged over the past decade, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

The projects, into which the bank channelled more than $60bn (£40bn), aimed to boost electricity and water supplies and expand transport networks in some of the world’s poorest countries. But they have resulted in more than 1.2 million people in Vietnam being displaced over the past decade, as they made way for dams and power plants funded by the organisation. In addition, more than 1 million people in China were displaced by about $12bn of bank investment.

World Bank Admits It Ignored Its Own Rules Designed To Protect The Poor

The World Bank, created to fight poverty, has admitted that it’s failed to follow its own rules for protecting the poor people swept aside by dams, roads and other big projects it bankrolls.

This conclusion, announced by the bank on Wednesday, amounts to a reversal of its previous efforts to downplay concerns raised by human rights activists and others working on behalf of the dispossessed -- people evicted from their land, sometimes in violent ways, to make way for World Bank-financed initiatives.

Income Inequality: From IMF To World Bank, It's Landing On The Agenda Of Elite Policy Meetings

WASHINGTON - From the Occupy movement, to the corridors of power: the rallying cry against inequality could be heard the last few days in a setting far removed from the street demonstrations that sprouted in 2011.

The past week's global financial meetings heard repeated warnings about inequality and its deleterious effect on economic growth.

The new shock doctrine: 'Doing Business' with the World Bank

One of the problems with neoliberal economic policy is that it's tough to get countries to agree to it; especially democratic ones. It has often required quite extreme measures, such as invasion - the classic example being the US-backed coup against Chile's democratically elected president - or debt bondage and structural adjustment led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both are effective ways of forcing countries to deregulate their markets.

Climate Change-Poverty Link Highlighted In World Bank Report

STOCKHOLM -- The World Bank says it will increasingly view its efforts to help developing countries fight poverty through a "climate lens."

In a report released Wednesday, the international lending institution warned that heat waves, rising seas, more severe storms and other impacts of climate change will trap millions of people in poverty.

Why the World Bank should take its own advice on climate change

The annual UN climate talks are getting underway this week in Doha, Qatar, and so we will be featuring a number of articles looking at the planetary emergency of global warming. Yesterday, Bill Henderson looked at the latest PR offensive from the oil industry and the lack of action by the Canadian government to prevent global warming. For a complete selection of our articles on climate change, check out our Environment issues page here. 

The World Bank delivered a brutal warning about the dangers of runaway climate change and called for rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a recent report. But don’t expect the bank to take its own advice.

Can the World Bank Be Transformed?

The election of the next president is important, but so, too, will be fundamental change to the bank's institutional structure and its relationship with the BRICS countries and the Global South.

There are three candidates left standing for the World Bank presidency, including two non-Americans. Now, they are proceeding directly to the final, and nominally “transparent,” step: private interviews with the World Bank executive board.

The choice for president is always important, but even more so this time around. Members of the executive board must ask themselves what sort of World Bank is needed in this post-Washington Consensus, BRICS-ascendant, era. Too big to fail – or even, as now, to atrophy – it is clear that the bank must play a more focused role in fighting for inclusiveness and sustainability in the development process. But what should the board be looking for in an innovative and inspirational leader? Are the old “owners” – the United States and Europeans – and the board itself, really ready for change? Or is all this a charade that will simply return us to business as usual?

The signals are confusing. U.S. President Barack Obama has cleverly finessed the process, rejecting the conventional wisdom of selecting a banker or a politician. All who feared the new president might be Larry Summers can relax. Instead, Obama nominated Korean-born Jim Young Kim, a university president who co-founded a major health NGO and is a development practitioner. Whether that “concession” truly earns the Americans the almost inevitable coronation remains to be seen.

World Bank nominees must come from emerging economies

With the American Robert Zoellick’s term as World Bank president drawing to a close, now is the time to acknowledge global economic reality and allow a developing country candidate to take the helm.

There have been calls for an open, merit-based selection process for the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund heads since the institutions were first proposed during the Second World War. At that time, the United States was the bulwark multilateralist that stopped John Maynard Keynes’s proposal that the institutions should be run by a U.S.-U.K. duopoly. The U.S. argued for a broader governance arrangement and won in light of overwhelming economic power. In spite of the multilateralist intentions that won out at Bretton Woods in the formal agreements, the “gentleman’s agreement” that was struck informally has let Europe head the IMF and the US head the World Bank virtually without a fight for more than half a century.

Just before the global financial crisis emerged, the G20 called for an “open, merit-based and transparent” presidential selection process. Like the shift from the G8 to the G20, economic power has shifted meaningfully towards emerging economies. As emerging donors become more important, the United States has become less of a sure thing in the multilateral realm. Last year's debacles over the budget ceiling and the recent withdrawal of funding from UNESCO (albeit on foreign policy grounds), as well as in aid initiatives for health and agriculture, have cast a shadow on American global leadership. The euro zone’s protracted problems are further proof that the G8’s once unequivocal leadership in world economic governance is on shaky ground.