Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur, last week accused a large number of multinational companies of “profiting from genocide” in the Gaza Strip.

In a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council, the special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories exposed the involvement of companies from around the world in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Five of those companies operate and export from Latin America and Spain.

“As lives in Gaza are being destroyed and the West Bank is under increasing attack, this report shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for so many,” says the report “From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide.”

Israel, which has repeatedly denied the charge of genocide, rejected the UN rapporteur’s report, calling it “baseless” and stating that "will go into the dustbin of history."

Among the companies accused by Albanese of participating in a "genocide economy" are Mexico's Orbia Advance Corporation and Brazil's Petrobras.

Also listed are the Spanish group Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) and two multinationals, Drummond and Glencore, which export coal to Israel from Colombia.

BBC Mundo contacted these five companies to find out their opinion on the accusations. Two of them, Orbia and CAF, had not responded to our requests for comment as of this writing.

In recent weeks, Albanese has issued a series of documents urging other countries to pressure and even sanction Israel to end its attacks on Gaza.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced it will impose sanctions against Albanese, who has worked as an independent investigator investigating human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories since May 2022.

The State Department’s decision comes after the Trump administration’s recent pressure campaign to have her removed from her post failed, with a statement before the UN accusing her of “anti-Semitism” and having “a relentless anti-Israel bias.”

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard called the announcement of sanctions against Albanese a “blatant attack.”

“Special rapporteurs are not appointed to please governments or to be popular, but to fulfill their mandate. Francesca Albanese’s mandate is to uphold human rights and international law, which are essential at a time when the very survival of Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip is at stake,” she said.

The controversial shipment of Colombian coal to Israel

By the middle of last year, Colombia was the largest supplier of coal to Israel, with a share of more than 50%. of the market, according to the American Journal of Transportation.

In June 2024, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who for years has publicly condemned Israel's attacks on the Palestinian people, announced that his country would suspend coal exports to Israel.

Petro wrote on the social media platform X that coal exports would only resume "when the genocide stops."

He also published a draft specifying that coal exports would resume if Israel complies with an order from the International Court of Justice requiring it to withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip.

But according to the report by Francesca Albanese, Colombia has continued to export coal to Israel through at least two multinational companies: the Swiss company Glencore and the American company Drummond.

A Glencore spokesperson told BBC Mundo that the company "categorically rejects all the accusations" contained in the report and considers them "unfounded and without any legal basis."

While Meanwhile, Drummond responded that following the August 2024 decree prohibiting the export of coal to Israel, the company asked the Petro government to recognize that there is a legal commitment that allows the export of the mineral to Israel.

Drummond specified that, after evaluating a series of documents, the competent authorities issued an authorization for a “legally consolidated” situation, in line with the provisions of the decree that recognizes such exceptions.

“Once the corresponding authorization was issued by the national government, the company proceeded to comply with the previously established contractual obligations,” concludes the statement sent to BBC Mundo.

This appears to demonstrate that Petro’s announced ban on Colombian coal exports to Israel has not been complied with.

“By supplying coal, gas, oil and fuel to Israel, companies contribute to the civilian infrastructure that Israel uses to consolidate its permanent annexation and the destruction of Palestinian life,” denounces the report presented by Albanese.

“This infrastructure supplies the Israeli army while destroying Gaza (…) The apparently civilian nature of such infrastructure does not exempt a company from its responsibility.”

The accusations that Petrobras denies

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated at the recent BRICS summit that the world must act to stop what he described as an Israeli “genocide” in Gaza.

“We cannot remain indifferent to the genocide carried out by Israel in Gaza, the indiscriminate murder of innocent civilians and the use of hunger as a weapon of war,” said the president on Sunday.

Lula has been a harsh critic of Israel since the war began.

He has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people and even recalled Brazil's ambassador to Israel, but, according to Albanese's report, has not banned oil exports that, according to several reports, fuel Israeli planes and tanks.

Petrobras, one of the largest oil companies in the world and majority-owned by the Brazilian state, is allegedly collaborating in this “genocide,” according to the UN special rapporteur.

The report specifies that oil giants BP and Chevron are the companies that contribute the most to Israel's crude oil imports.

“Each conglomerate effectively supplied 8% of Israeli crude oil between October 2023 and July 2024, complemented by crude oil shipments from Brazilian oil fields, in which Petrobras has the largest share,” the report states. text.

Petrobras told BBC Mundo that the company has not sold “crude oil or fuel oil to Israeli customers during the period mentioned” in the report.

The company added that it cannot be concluded that Petrobras has exported oil to Israel solely because Petrobras has a large stake in Brazilian oilfields.

“Petrobras is not the only producer and exporter of oil from Brazil,” the company specified.

It added that “Petrobras respects and promotes human rights” and works in accordance with “international laws and standards, in particular the Global Compact and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

Orbia “facilitates Israel’s expansionism”

Mexican Orbia Advance Corporation also appears on the list, through its 80%-owned subsidiary Netafim.

According to the UN report, Netafim, a world leader in drip irrigation technology, provides infrastructure to exploit water resources in the occupied West Bank.

The same source claims that the company has designed its agricultural technology to suit Israel’s “expansionist needs.”

“Netafim’s technology has enabled the intensive exploitation of water and land in the West Bank, further depleting Palestinian natural resources,” the report states.

“In the Jordan Valley, Netafim-funded irrigation systems have facilitated the expansion of Israeli crops, while Palestinian farmers, deprived of water and facing 93 % of their dry lands are displaced, unable to compete with Israeli production,” it adds.

The report also accuses the company of perfecting its methods thanks to its collaboration with Israeli companies that develop military technology.

Orbia Advance Corporation did not respond to repeated requests for comment sent by BBC Mundo.

The CAF group “contributes to consolidating settlements”

The Basque business group CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles SA) also appears in the report presented by Francesca Albanese as a company that benefits from the conflict in Gaza.

The report states that: “Several companies contributed to the development of roads and public transport infrastructure essential to establishing and expanding (Israeli) settlements, and connecting them with Israel while excluding and segregating Palestinians.”

According to the text, the CAF group is part of a consortium with a company listed in the database data from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) working to maintain and expand the Jerusalem tram red line and build a new green line, at a time when other Spanish companies have pulled out of Israel due to international pressure.

In 2024, the Catalan company COMSA withdrew from the consortium after having won the construction of the Jerusalem tram blue line, while last week the Basque steelmaker SIDENOR announced that it would stop supplying steel to Israeli companies.

The Basque steelmaker made the decision after reports emerged that it had been supplying steel bars to the Israeli arms manufacturer IMI Systems (IMI) for at least ten months, owned by Elbit Systems, one of Israel's arms giants.

Several international organizations, such as Amnesty International, have harshly criticized CAF's investments in the region.

CAF cannot continue to look the other way and not comply with international recommendations. Amnesty International has been reminding the company for years that the light rail contributes to the maintenance and consolidation of illegal settlements, the illegal occupation, and the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel, said Esteban Beltran, director of Amnesty International Spain, in a press release.

We ask CAF, once again, to abandon this project and any tender promoted by the Israeli government in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, he added.

Beltran also asked the Spanish government and the Basque government, a shareholder in the company, to act urgently and evaluate "the links between CAF and Israel's illegal conduct."