Dinant statement on Real News Network

17 June, 2019

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 17 June 2019: Corporación Dinant today issued this statement in response to a Real News Network report of 14 June 2019 erroneously linking the company to an iron oxide mine in the Botaderos National Park near the Aguán valley of Northern Honduras. Dinant is a family-owned agribusiness and consumer products manufacturer founded in Honduras by Miguel Facusse Barjum in 1960. Neither Dinant, nor the late Sr. Facusse, nor the Facusse Saenz family have ever had financial ties to the Honduran mining industry, as the Real News Network incorrectly reports. Neither Dinant, nor the late Sr. Facusse, have ever been involved in Honduran politics, and it has never been proven that Don Miguel Facusse Barjum played any role in the removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office, as the report wrongly states. Dinant has never employed a private militia, as alleged by the Real News Network. In fact, in 2014, under Don Miguel Facusse Barjum’s leadership, Dinant removed all firearms from security men and women at all of the company’s plantations, extraction mills and manufacturing plants. Security staff and contractors now carry only a baton, whistle and mobile phone, while wearing a high-visibility vest. Such a policy was unprecedented in Central America at the time and remains extremely rare to this day. Furthermore, Sr. Facusse introduced the company to the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, an internationally accepted benchmark that strictly governs how Dinant vets, recruits and trains its security men and women, and how they engage with members of the community. Dinant was the first company in Honduras to adopt the Voluntary Principles. Company spokesman, Roger Pineda, said, “On its website, the Real News Network claims to produce “independent, verifiable, fact-based journalism” and yet its report on the iron oxide mine near the Aguán makes several critical errors in relation to Dinant, including making false accusations against the company’s founder, Miguel Facusse Barjum, who passed away in 2015. We demand that the Real News Network removes these erroneous and irrelevant references to Dinant and the Facusse Saenz family from its report on the iron oxide mine.”

Dinant statement on Real News Network

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