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Veolia loses Australian desalination contract worth $3.5B
The Premier, Victoria
Another massive, well-deserved blow to Veolia!
This is Veolia's second largest loss since the Derail Veolia/Alstom campaign was launched in Bilbao, Basque Country (Spain) in November 2008. The largest loss, still, is the Stockholm metro contract, worth $4.5B.
The troubled company, as many of you know, has audaciously advertised in the Israeli media a few days ago a job opening for its Jerusalem Light Rail project, raising the ire of human rights activists worldwide who had thought that its leaked decision to withdraw — under pressure from heavy BDS blows — from the illegal project would come into effect soon.
The Derail Veolia/Alstom campaign, however, was never called off after that Haaretz report of Veolia's intentions. We've always held that we shall believe it when we see it, not when we hear about it in some media report.
Furthermore, the campaign will continue even after (if) Veolia actually withdraws from the Jerusalem project that clearly violates international law, as the company is involved in providing other transportation and waste management services to the illegal Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territory, as documented by WhoProfits.org.
While Veolia's apparent mismanagement of its existent massive public works projects all over the world is of great help to us, the persistent, principled and increasingly sophisticated campaigning by Derail Veolia activists and groups in many countries — in Australia in this case — takes substantial credit for these victories. This latest blow to Veolia comes at the heels of another major loss for its subsidiary, Connex, of the public transport contract in Melbourne. A pattern is developing, clearly.
We salute the Derail Veolia activists in Australia for a job very well done.