2011-2012 FOIA request and Legislative advocacy on resource transparency

4월 18일
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In 2011 through 2012, the Clinic continued with its general goal of enhancing transparency around the multinational extractive companies' cooptation with the local authoritarian regimes, while the fact-finding efforts on the Shwe gas project inside Myanmar met with practical difficulties and was limited to secondhand accounts through the refugees in the Thailand border towns.

The 2010 meeting with Earth Rights International suggested making FOIA requests to KOGAS, the South Korean minority investor in the Shwe gas project. The Clinic made such FOIA request in 2010 but it was ultimately denied for reasons that the relationship and transactions between a private company and a foreign government was within the domain of trade secret. Noting that the current statutory structure is not adequate, the Clinic began a legislative advocacy to introduce into Korea the recently passed US Dodd and Frank Act which mandated transparency on all overseas resource extraction companies' relationship with local governments.

On March 23, 2011, the Clinic assisted Member of Parliament Seungsoo CHO in holding a seminar titled Secrecy of Overseas Resources Development and Ways for Disclosure, where Paul Donowitz, the ERI staff that the Clinic met in the February 2010 visit to Chiang Mai, stressed on the need for transparency and Professor KS Park presented a Dodd-and-Frank-like bill that requires transparency over the payments made by foreign extractive companies to local governments or government-like entities.

At the congressional seminar, a law firm representing the Overseas Resources Development Companies Association opposed the bill.

On March 2-3, 2012, the Clinic attended Extractive Industry Transparency International's annual conference held in Paris, France, and met with the US leader Isabell Munilla to learn about the legislative advocacy efforts for the Dodd and Frank Act. From viewer's left: Jayoung YOON, Takgon LEE, Professor KS Park, Wooyeun KIM, Isabell Munilla (Publish What You Pay US), Eunsoo LEE, and a PWYP staffer.