DZ Bank – deadly bank

HEADQUARTERS

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

publicly traded

LARGEST SHAREHOLDERS

Cooperative model
DZ Bank Group provides financial services to over 800 “cooperative banks” across Germany

operations

Global

total assets

£543 billion

financing overview

climate crisis	controversial weapons	Palestine occupation	Migrant abuse
£5,272,800,000	£256,8000,000	£1,087,200,000	£257,000,000

Company highlights and involvement

company involved		funding	climate crisis	cont. weapons	PALESTINE OCCUPATION	MIGRANT ABUSE
SIEMENS		£479m
GLENCORE		£38m
AIRBUS		£257m
AXEL SPRINGER		£431m

Fossil fuel companies bankrolling the climate crisis

Funded: £38m

climate crisis

Glencore, one of the world’s largest mining companies and a leading trader of fossil-fuel commodities, embodies the brutal realities of neocolonial exploitation. Glencore accounts for a significant portion of global coal production, operating mines in countries like Colombia, South Africa, and Australia, while systematically ravaging environments and trampling human rights.

Its operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are a stark example, where investigations revealed years of waste acid discharge from its Luilu copper refinery, causing severe pollution and ongoing spills. Glencore’s denial of responsibility for child labour at its sites, instead blaming impoverished locals, is a cynical attempt to deflect from its own complicity. Further exposing its predatory practices, the Paradise Papers leak unveiled Glencore’s ties to controversial figures who facilitated the acquisition of undervalued mining rights, robbing the DRC of a tenth of its annual budget.

Glencore’s corruption extends across Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Cameroon, with its former head of oil trading and four executives facing UK bribery charges, including allegations of flying cash bribes on private jets. In South America, its copper mining has poisoned indigenous lands and rivers in Peru, devastating the health and livelihoods of the Quechua and K’ana peoples while denying compensation. The company’s dark history also includes funding state security forces and paramilitary groups in Colombia and the Philippines to intimidate and murder communities resisting its exploitation.

Companies bankrolling the occupation of palestine

Funded: £431m

palestine occupation

Axel Springer SE is a European multinational mass media company, based in Berlin, Germany. The company offers printing and publishing of advertisements, digital classifieds portfolio, marketing models and related services. Axel Springer’s operations are segmented into News Media, Classifieds Media, and Marketing Media. The company is organised as a publishing house and is one of the largest mass media publishers in the EU with numerous multimedia news brands, such as Bild, Die Welt, Fakt, and the US political news site Politico.

Springer’s Israeli classified ads website Yad2 — the largest Craigslist-like classifieds site in the country — publishes real estate listings across Israel, including rental apartments and sales in Israeli settlements that are considered illegal under international law. Since its founding in 2005, Yad2 has become Israel’s top online platform for classified ads.

A complaint was filled earlier by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre on behalf of the Palestinians, the complaint says that Yad2’s facilitation of settlement activity fuels Israeli land grabbing and therefore violates Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. Passed last year, the law requires German companies to identify and mitigate human rights risks within their global supply chains, including in subsidiaries which they control.

Springer enshrines support for Israel in its mission statement, formal internal guidance that the company calls its “essentials.” All of Springer’s subsidiaries and employees are bound to uphold this stance. In October 2023, the firm fired a Lebanese employee who questioned the pro-Israel policy.

Funded: £479m

palestine occupation

CLIMATE CRISIS

Siemens is a publicly traded German multinational technology company. It sells products to the manufacturing, infrastructure and transport sectors. It has sold these products to the Israeli state-owned companies and its products have been used in occupied territories.

Case study: Siemens train cars used in the A1 route

In 2018, Siemens won a tender from the Israeli state-owned railway company, Israel Railways, for the supply of 330 electric cars in the amount of approximately NIS 4 billion, as part of the Israel Railways electrification project, which includes the Tel Aviv Jerusalem Fast Train (A1).

The tender included the provision of wagons in the amount of NIS 3.2 billion, the establishment of the maintenance facility for the wagons in the amount of NIS 230 million and maintenance services in the amount of approximately NIS 400 million. The tender included the purchase of 60 sets of electric cars, which make up about 330 cars, which contain about 33,000 seats. In addition, Siemens will build a maintenance facility for the electric cars for the company and provide maintenance services.

In December 2021, the Siemens train cars came into use in the A1 train route. The A1 train route crosses the Green Line into the occupied West Bank in two areas, using occupied Palestinian land, some of it privately owned, for an Israeli transportation project aimed exclusively for Israelis. In December 2021, the Siemens train cars came into use in the A1 train route.

For more on the A1 train see Who Profits report: Crossing the Line: The Tel Aviv Jerusalem Fast Train (A1).

Weapons Companies bankrolling the Gaza Genocide and Cont. Weapons

Funded: £257m

MIGRANT ABUSE

GAZA GENOCIDE

Airbus SE, headquartered in the Netherlands, is a multinational military and aerospace company that specializes in manufacturing commercial and military aircraft. Between 2008 and July 2024, the U.S. government awarded Airbus over $7.5 billion of contracts, the vast majority of which were held by the Departments of Defense (DHS) and Homeland Security (DHS).

U.S. immigration authority Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses Airbus helicopters as part of its Air and Marine Operations (AMO) fleet. In 2023 alone, AMO’s enforcement resulted in 1,004 arrests and 89,909 apprehensions of immigrants. According to Airbus, it has provided aircraft for U.S. border enforcement operations since the 1980s.

CBP uses the Airbus AS350 Light Enforcement Helicopter (LEH) for “aerial patrol and surveillance of stationary or moving targets,” particularly in metropolitan areas. These helicopters are equipped with electro-optical (day) and infrared (night) sensors. Airbus has provided CBP with more than 100 helicopters from this series over the years, but started providing CBP with new and improved H125 helicopters, “uniquely configured” for the agency, in 2020. Airbus has described the new model as “one of the most advanced, high-tech law enforcement helicopters ever developed.”

CBP has also used the smaller Airbus EC120 helicopter as a “highly-effective aerial surveillance platform in the border desert areas where terrain can be difficult to traverse on foot.” CBP has frequently used this aircraft to assist ground agents in detecting traces left behind by people crossing the desert.

Airbus has collaborated extensively with Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and between 2008 and 2021 applied for a UK export license to sell weapons to Israel. IAI and Airbus also have historically collaborated in joint commercial ventures. In 2011, Airbus Military and IAI came together to sign a Memorandum of Understanding to develop and market the C295 platform (a combat aircraft with surveillance systems). In 2018, Airbus signed a $600million deal with IAI to lease Heron TP drones to Germany’s Defence Ministry. These are unmanned drones which have been used in Gaza since October 2023, and have been reportedly deployed by German forces in Afghanistan for ‘a number of years’.

Airbus Defence and Space Airborne Solutions, a 100% subsidiary of Airbus, also partners with IAI to operate maritime aerial surveillance services for the European Border Agency. These drones, previously tested in operations conducted by the Israeli armed forces, are used to intercept migrant vessels crossing the Mediterranean. According to Statewatch, the choice of these drones was determined by their “performance… in the maintenance of public order by the Israeli Defence Forces and police forces”, implicating them in the ongoing enforcement of Israel’s system of colonial occupation and apartheid. Airbus has thus not only profited from – and helped Israel to profit from – the sale of weapons tested on Palestinians, but the company has also enabled Israel to establish itself as a leading provider of defence and commercial technologies on the global stage.