The Counter: A Year of Supporting Organisations Challenging Corporate Power

This week, a year ago, SOMO launched The Counter, a global helpdesk for activists, civil society organisations (CSOs), and communities confronting corporate power. The initiative was set up in direct response to the many requests SOMO receives every year from partners around the world asking for help on cases involving companies causing harm to people and the environment.

The Counter conducts “follow-the-money” investigations, digging into company operations, finances, structures, and ownership networks to identify who is ultimately causing and contributing to harm.

Our first year of operation has confirmed that The Counter fills a critical gap. In just 12 months, responding to requests from activists, journalists, and lawyers, we investigated more than 175 cases of corporate abuse. These cases involved companies operating in every region of the world and across sectors ranging from mining, garments, and oil and gas to electronics, agriculture, and fishing.

“The research from The Counter filled a critical need for fast, specialised, independent, and objective assessment of corporate structures and supply chains. While all the research provided by The Counter was crucial, the most essential aspect was uncovering data not readily accessible to the general public. The Counter’s work is akin to having an expert witness.”
Alejandra Gonza, Global Rights Advocacy

Insights from a year of requests for investigation

While The Counter’s primary goal is to help activists access the information they need, after a year of operation, we’ve reflected on the data requests, looking at which issues, sectors, and problems have come up most. This analysis helps us ensure we continue to develop the type of resources The Counter offers in a manner that is tailored to the needs of groups asking for support. We also hope to use our analytics to help civil society groups working on similar issues to connect and coordinate their efforts to hold corporations accountable. Below are some of the main insights from year 1.

Most requests to The Counter are about unpacking complex corporate structures

As expected, questions about shareholders and owners, how companies are structured, and who or what finances them were major themes in most requests we receive. This is where many CSOs struggle. Reading company financials is not for everyone, and key data are often held by proprietary sources and have to be paid for. The Counter team, including some brilliant data geeks, loves pulling apart financial statements and unravelling complex money trails. The Counter also maintains subscriptions to a range of databases and sources, from trade and shipping data to company and financial market data, enabling us to find and dig into ownership structures and deals.

Climate and biodiversity activists are key users of The Counter

Almost a quarter of all the requests we received at The Counter were about companies causing climate chaos, environmental destruction, and biodiversity loss. The data we supplied was used in scores of campaign actions. For example, an investigative journalist asked The Counter to map the supply chain of a popular brand of sneakers. We traced the chain from Asian factories to leather producers linked to deforestation in the Amazon. The journalist was able to use the data to expose the environmental harms behind the global supply chain. Already, some investors have divested from the brand.

“The Counter is a great service for anyone who gets stuck in researching supply chains.” Yara van Heugten, Follow the Money

In another case, a CSO asked The Counter to investigate a combined fossil fuel and carbon capture and storage (CCS) project that had devastated Indigenous communities in Southeast Asia. We uncovered a complex corporate structure involving multinationals from Europe and Asia, offshore accounts, and billions of dollars in financing from development banks, in apparent contradiction to the bank’s social and environmental policies. The Counter investigation also revealed that the CCS project, promoted as advancing carbon neutrality, would enable over two decades of continued fossil fuel extraction at the site.

Corporate-led land grabbing was a major issue across multiple sectors

One issue that came up repeatedly over the last year was land grabbing involving multinational companies. These land grabs were done to make way for industries like mining, agribusiness, and carbon offsetting schemes. Several involved forced evictions of communities and deforestation. For example, The Counter helped organisations in Central Africa find information on a major bank providing services to a soybean agribusiness that had caused violent forced evictions of local people. We also uncovered a European-owned processing facility that bought the soybeans. Armed with this new data and new targets for their campaigning, the groups are planning to use the bank’s accountability mechanism to push for remedy and target the European buyer over its responsibility for the abuses.

Connecting the dots on labour abuses by investigating supply chains

Labour abuses, including forced labour, harassment, union busting, and poor working conditions, were prominent in requests to The Counter. Most requests for information about the exploitation of workers in supply chains were linked to business operations in Asia, where many multinationals in industries such as garments and footwear source inputs and finished products.

An international labour organisation working with South Asian unions asked The Counter to investigate which fashion brands purchased from factories that had retaliated against workers after minimum wage negotiations. By analysing company structures, trade data, and shipping records, The Counter identified several fast-fashion brands – mostly European retailers – as regular buyers from these factories, opening up new avenues for campaigning.

“The Counter shared with us information in a very accessible manner even though the issues were quite technical. The super helpful research from The Counter helped us build effective and strategic community-led advocacy campaigns.” Tom Weerachat, International Accountability Project.

Helping activists test the German Supply Chain Act

During the year, we received several requests from groups and communities looking to use the new German due diligence law. This law makes German companies legally responsible for preventing and ending human rights abuses and environmental violations throughout their supply chains.

Despite the law’s potential, most CSOs struggle to identify supply chain links to European companies because of a lack of transparency by both the companies and European customs authorities. CSOs working on German corporate accountability turned to The Counter for help. The team investigated several different cases, including the supply chain links between German agricultural and supermarket companies and production facilities in Central America linked to abuse of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. By exposing the links, activists were able to push the German companies to address the root causes of the conflict.

“The research from The Counter helped us realise that we’re dealing with a bigger mining company than we thought we were dealing with. We could feed this information directly into our campaign, which strengthened our ability to oppose the mining company.”
Anonymous (The name of the company and the group that made the request are withheld for security reasons).

Exposing companies supplying goods to Israel to sustain its attack on Gaza

Since October 2023, we have had frequent requests from activists, human rights groups, and journalists investigating companies supplying Israel with military and dual-use products used in its war in Gaza.

In May 2024, The Counter looked into the supply of military jet fuel to Israel, exposing companies, governments, and shipping routes. Follow-up coordination with organisers internationally resulted in a successful campaign denying ports in Spain and the UK to the vessels carrying jet fuel to Israel and helped ramp up pressure to cut off such supplies.

The next phase: expanding services in response to demand

We are incredibly proud that The Counter has supported so many organisations, activists, and communities to stand up to corporate power. Given the overwhelming response and appreciation from the groups we helped and the growing demand for data, we are planning to scale up The Counter and expand the services we can provide.

Building on SOMO’s decades of experience supporting individuals and communities to secure access to justice and remedy in cases of corporate abuse, in 2025, we intend to further develop the potential of The Counter to assist individuals and groups in securing remedy. We will cooperate closely with our partner organisations around the world to explore the provision of advice on available remedy pathways, as well as data to support remedy actions, including using legal and non-judicial processes.

From the beginning, we have tried to ensure The Counter can operate in multiple languages and be a genuinely global helpdesk. This is important for groups making requests and for our ability to find data. Our team already works in over 7 languages, from Chinese to Spanish, and we expect to expand the range of languages in which people can request data in the coming years.

A final word on year 1. The Counter is a major investment, and it could not have existed without the solidarity and generous financial support of the Dutch Postcode Lottery and True Costs Initiative.