Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Accuses China and India’s Illegal Arms Deals With Myanmar

According to the latest reports, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (“the fund”), one of the world’s largest investors with more than 1.2 trillion euros (which is 1.3 trillion dollars) in assets and stakes in more than 9,000 companies around the world, has excluded two countries that illegally supplied arms to Myanmar, China and India. This is due to the two companies taking an extreme risk by selling weapons to a state that commits serious and systematic breaches of the international rules on the “conduct of hostilities”, which is “unacceptable”. “The fund”, worth 13,183 billion crowns ($1,341 billion) at the end of 2021, holds a 0.37% stake in the Chinese group and 0.32% in the Indian group; has accused China’s AviChina (an aircraft industry company) of delivering K-8 light military aircraft in December 2021 to Myanmar, which has been under the junta’s control since a February 1 military coup of the same year. India’s Bharat Electronics is also under investigation for allegedly supplying Myanmar with remote-controlled weapon systems in July 2021. The management of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is bound by a set of ethical rules that prohibit it from investing in companies that commit serious human rights abuses, including building nuclear weapons or are “particularly inhumane”, such as coal and tobacco.

By this point, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has divested from a number of companies, including Airbus, Boeing, Glencore, Lockheed Martin and Philip Morris, all of which are blacklisted according to its investment ethical rules.