"Berta Cáceres: why her murder was a political and corporate crime", 15 January 2026

...The murder of Berta Cáceres was neither a crime of passion nor an isolated incident. It was the final execution of a meticulously planned scheme , financed with money from international development banks and carried out by a network that included trained hitmen, active military personnel, paid journalists, and state complicity. This is the conclusion of the Final Report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) , presented almost a decade after the crime that shocked the world...

The report details the financial machinery that made the crime possible. Approximately 67% of the funds for the Agua Zarca project—some $12.4 million from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) and the Netherlands Development Bank (FMO)—were diverted to illicit activities. These funds not only paid hitmen but also bought silence, manipulated the truth, and corrupted institutions...

Simultaneously, DESA was carrying out a media disinformation campaign..

The report points to a “hard core of impunity” protecting high-ranking officials...

The State, for its part, was complicit through both action and omission...

This case is a global paradigm of a new type of crime: corporate-environmental murder. It shows how international capital (development banks), local elites (the Atala family), and the state apparatus join forces to silence, through assassinations and disinformation, those who defend the commons...