Banks have been targeted in a legal complaint about human rights and mining.  

ANZ Bank and 11 other Australian and international banks have been hit with human rights grievances from seven traditional owners, who have filed complaints through their lawyers.

The complaints are linked to Santos’ $5.8 billion Barossa gas project in the Timor Sea. The traditional owners, assisted by Equity Generation Lawyers, have accused the banks of providing funding for the project in breach of their human rights. 

The complaints relate to a US$1 billion loan to Santos for the Barossa project and proposed lending for the revamp of the Darwin LNG project, which has run out of gas and needs new fields to be developed to maintain exports critical to energy security for Japan and the rest of Asia.

The lawyers representing the traditional owners have requested the banks cease their funding for Santos. 

Vidhya Karnamadakala, an associate from Equity Generation Lawyers who is representing the traditional owners, said “they have a right to say no and they are asking banks to stop funding Santos,” accusing ANZ of “window dressing” on its human rights commitments. 

ANZ reportedly arranged the loan for Barossa with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Japan’s MUFG. Westpac and National Australia Bank also contributed to it, as well as Korean and Japanese export credit agencies, according to Equity Generation Lawyers. SMBC (Japan), ING, DNB Bank, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Canada, DBS Bank, SMBC, and Mizuho are all involved, while export credit agencies KEXIM and K-SURE of Korea and JBIC of Japan also received complaints.

For Santos, the legal action is the latest of a string of legal challenges and hurdles that have piled up against its Barossa project. 

In addition to the overturning of the regulator’s environmental approval, those include extra conditions on emissions envisaged under the Albanese government’s beefed-up safeguard mechanism and extra checks for culturally significant sites across the pipeline route for the project. 

Opposition to Barossa is expected to be a primary focus at Santos’ annual shareholder meeting in Adelaide, where the board led by chairman Keith Spence is facing a potential “second strike” over the remuneration report. 

Several activist shareholder groups are opposing the report although all four key proxy advisers are backing the board.

The lawyers say the complaint is set to be the first test of ANZ’s grievance mechanism framework that was introduced in November 2021 to evaluate and respond to human rights-related complaints linked with its lending to corporate customers. 

The framework was drawn up after the bank in 2020 agreed to compensate more than 1000 Cambodian families that were forcibly displaced by a sugar company it provided funding to in 2011. Responses have been requested by May 16, the firm said.