Are your retirement savings funding controversial industries without your knowledge?
This cross-border investigation reveals how ordinary people become unwitting investors in no-go sectors through public pension funds. These funds often channel money into private equity ventures that back companies producing weapons, trading in cryptocurrencies or expanding fossil fuels — even investing in Russia’s sanctioned oil and gas industry.
European public pension funds invest billions in private investment funds, such as private equity, private infrastructure, hedge and venture capital funds. While the pension funds themselves often have strict sustainability criteria for their investments and report their investments in detail to stakeholders, their private fund partners are not bound by the same criteria.
As a result, pension holders can end up owning a stake in controversial industries, unbeknownst to pension holders or even the pension funds themselves.
A series of investigations coordinated by the Anti-Corruption Data Collective and published in Bloomberg and Børsen used commercially available data on private investments, company and asset ownership and ship tracking data to reveal how Danish, US and UK public pension fund capital has flowed into controversial industries.
This includes indirect stakes in oil and gas tankers bringing Russian fossil fuels to market after the invasion of Ukraine; investments by Danish pension funds in fracking in the US, despite the environmentally damaging practice being banned in Denmark; and investments by a Danish public pension fund’s private equity partners in a controversial Chinese bitcoin mining company.
See the stories below.
Great work by @borsendk building on data and analysis by ACDC and Data Desk.
Pension fund ship sailed with Russian oil after
invasion of Ukraine https://t.co/8a6eGfYcBg— Anti-Corruption Data Collective (@acdatacollectiv) December 10, 2024