The Church of England (CoE) has sold its stake in a British oil and gas company over allegations of bribery, corruption and human rights abuses and what it said was the company’s failure to unequivocally rule out drilling for oil in Africa’s oldest national park.

London-listed Soco International has been criticised in the past two years by conservationists including WWF and Sir David Attenborough for its attempt to drill in Virunga in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is a world heritage site and home to around half the world’s mountain gorillas.

The church was sufficiently alarmed by the allegations that it asked the company to conduct an independent public inquiry into them, but at its recent AGM Soco refused to publish the scope or outcome of the inquiry.

That prompted the Church Commissioners, which manage the CoE’s £6.7bn investment fund, to divest their entire £1.6m holding from Soco in what they called a “last resort”. The stake was sold on Friday.

The divestment is only the third time in five years that the church has divested from a company on ethical grounds. In 2012 it sold its shares in News Corporation in protest at phone-hacking and in 2010 it sold its holdings in Vedanta Resources over human rights concerns linked with the company’s mining operations India.

“We have called time because without the changes we sought this is not a sustainable or ethical investment for church funds,” said Edward Mason, head of responsible investment at the Church Commissioners. “We take engagement with companies very seriously. In this instance Soco has not responded positively or sincerely to the concerns we raised.”

Adam Matthews of the church’s ethical investment advisory group said they started engaging with Soco over their concerns in 2013, and intensely since late 2014 after a Congolese military official linked to the company was apparently filmed offering a bribe to opponents, and a park ranger was assaulted by soldiers after trying to stop Soco erecting a mast in the park.

“These are really serious events. There’s no evidence it was directly committed by the company, but it was associated with its activities,” said Mason. “It was the human rights, bribery and corruption angles which really concerned us. It was [until recently] a FTSE350 company, it’s a significant British company.”

The church outlined four main areas of concern: the failure to publish an independent inquiry into the human rights abuse allegations or adopt best practice environmental and social standards; concerns over the independence of the board and chairman; and a failure to explicitly rule out future drilling if the park’s boundaries changed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Virunga national park is home to around half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas. Photograph: Brent Stirton/WWF-Canon/Getty Images

Soco reached an agreement last summer with WWF to rule out exploration within the park, but critics have since raised concerns that the company has not ruled out exploration if the boundary changes. The DRC’s prime minister has said he wants to allow oil exploration in the park and has said, “Soco had brought the issue of the boundary to the government’s attention.”

Any boundary changes to Virunga national park are likely to spark a strong response from Unesco, which says exploitation of oil is incompatible with the world heritage site status and declassifying parts of the park to allow drilling would be “a major modification”.

Since its agreement with WWF last summer, Soco has repeatedly said it would not drill within the park and is not lobbying for boundary changes. In March, it said it no longer had any personnel in block V, the area around Lake Edward where it has a license to explore and where it undertook seismic tests in 2014. “After providing the DRC government with interpretation of the seismic results, Soco will have no further involvement in the block,” it said.

But Matthews said that the company’s position on future boundary changes is ambiguous: “We still feel there’s that element of doubt in the statements they’ve made.”

He added: “We were seeking assurances that in absolutely no circumstances could there by any consideration given to them going back into the park under different boundaries,” and such assurances had not been forthcoming, he said.

Emmanuel de Merode, the Belgian director of Virunga national park, said: “We share the deep concern shown by the Church of England that Soco International has failed to adequately investigate these allegations internally. Given the very serious nature of the allegations it is incumbent on all relevant jurisdictions, including the UK, to ensure appropriate action is taken”.







