The three large Dutch banks - ABN Amro, ING and Rabobank - are structurally involved in abuses in the palm oil sector. These abuses include land grabbing, human rights violations and cutting down rainforests, according to two reports environmental organization Milieudefensie published on Monday, ANP reports.
According to Milieudefensie, between 2010 and 2018 the three banks invested at least 4.9 billion euros into 14 palm oil companies guilty of 118 abuses in nine countries.
Eleven crew members of Dutch freighter FWN Rapide who were taken hostage by pirates off the Nigerian coast last month, have been released. They are on their way to be reunited with their families, Groningen shipping company ForestWave announced on Wednesday, RTL Nieuws reports.
The Nigerian Air Force is prepared to help Shell protect its pipelines in the African country using newly acquired drones, should Shell ask for that help, Air Force commander Sadique Abubakar said, ANP reports.
The Dutch oil giant regularly faces criticism in Nigeria due to pollution. On the mainline, Shell pipelines are often drained and sabotaged, resulting in heavy pollution, according to the oil company. Critics blame the large environmental damage on outdated pipelines and negligence on Shell's part.
Twelve crew members of a cargo ship belonging to Groningen shipping company ForestWave were kidnapped by pirates on Saturday. At the time of the attack, the ship was at sea between Ghana and the Nigerian Port Harcourt, NU.nl reports.
The pirates took 12 of the 14 crew members with them, ForestWave announced on Monday. Nothing is known about their condition or fate. The company has been unable to make contact with the pirates.
Many of the promotion girls Heineken uses in African countries to stimulate the sale of the Dutch beer, are faced with sexual harassment during their work, according to Olivier van Beemen, who investigated the situation these young women face and wrote a book about it.
In an article in NRC, Van Beemen writes that many Heineken promotion girls have to deal with sexual harassment or assault, have to go to bed with managers, and prostitute themselves to clients. Heineken has known about this problem for 15 years, but does little about it, he said.
Human rights organization Amnesty International is calling on Nigeria, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom to launch a criminal investigation into Shell and the possibility that company officials tacitly encouraged the Nigerian military government in Ogoniland to commit atrocities in the 1990s, including rapes, murders, acts of torture, and the burning of villages.
Shell is being accused of complicity in the execution-style deaths of nine Nigerian activists in 1995. The widows of four of these activists filed a lawsuit in the Netherlands against the Dutch oil giant on Wednesday, the Volkskrant reports.
A KLM flight about to depart from Schiphol to Lagos in Nigeria was the scene of an altercation when a man was brought aboard in handcuffs. According to Nigerian media, the cuffed man was a Nigerian about to be deported because he does not have the proper papers.
Departing Foreign Affairs Minister Bert Koenders called on the European Union to pay better attention to which arms supplies they support. According to him, plenty of money is raised to combat famine in Yemen, but Britain and France for example still provide weapons to Saudi Arabia, which is playing an important role in the civil war raging in Yemen, he said to BNR.
"I think that is a very bad thing", Koenders said to BNR. "We have a European arms export policy. Then you should also look at human rights issues and international humanitarian law, at the stability in a region."
Almost 1.5 million euros in cash was seized in five money laundering investigation launched at Schiphol Airport in June, the Public Prosecutor announced on Thursday. Several suspects will soon have to answer in court.
The Nigerian government is taking oil giant Shell Nigeria Exploration & Production to court and demanding just over 6 billion euros in compensation for damage caused by a major oil spill in 2011
Shell is being investigated for bribery surrounding the granting of an oil contract in Nigeria. Investigators from the tax investigation service FIOD and the Public Prosecution office visited the Headquarters in The Hague in connection with that case, a spokesperson for the oil company said to news wire ANP.
ActionAid Nederland is accusing oil-giant shell of unethically accepting a 1.7 billion dollar tax rebate in Nigeria, while 110 million people in the country have less than a dollar to spend a day. The organization wants the Dutch government to confront Shell about these tax exemptions in developing countries
On Friday a court in The Hague ruled that four Nigerian farmers and fishermen can sue Shell in courts in a Dutch court for pollution caused by oil spills in the African country. "The Dutch court and this court consider it has jurisdiction in the case against Shell and its subsidiary in Nigeria", the judge said, news wire AFP reports.
Shell will clean up the oil spill in a heavily polluted area in the Niger Delta. This area is located in Bodo, Nigeria, which has about 40 thousand inhabitants. The company will also carry the costs of the cleanup.
"The growing extremist violence of Boko Haram must be fought more effectively. It is good that African countries take the initiative to do so," said Dutch foreign affairs minster Bert Koenders in Addis Ababa after the annual summit of the African Union (AU).
Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) has agreed to pay compensation for two of its oil spills that occurred in Nigeria in 2008. In total, Shell will pay 55 million British pounds, an amount agreed to in the largest out-of-court settlement for Nigerian oil spills to date, which followed a three-year legal battle between Shell and 15,600 Nigerians living in Bodo.
Oil company Shell is once again involved in a major oil spill in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Due to a leak, the equivalent of 3,800 barrels of oil have drained away, Reuters reports. According to Shell, the damage was caused by a failed attempt to drain oil.
The Nigerian parliament wants oil company Shell to pay nearly 4 billion dollars (3.2 billion euro) for the damage caused by an oil spill at its offshore oil field in Bonga in December 2011.
The Cooperating Aid Agencies (Samewerkende Hulporganisaties - SHO) have announced that they will raise money in a national relief effort in the fight against Ebola via Giro 555.
At Schiphol there is a growing fear of the deadly Ebola disease among pilots, cabin crew and ground staff.
A 52 year old Dutchman who suffered from a fever after returning from a business trip to Ebola infested Nigeria ha tested negative for the Ebola virus. This was confirmed by Dr Naruemon Sawanpanyalert, a specialist for the Medical Department.
Two Dutch doctors may be returned to The Netherlands after possibly having contracted the deadly Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone. Though there are no current symptoms with the doctors, there is still a fear that they may have the virus, the NOS reports.
A 72-year-old Dutch woman has been conned out of around €200,000 by a 31-year-old Nigerian man who preyed on the woman's search for love on the internet, the Algemeen Dagblad reports.
