Louisiana takes important step toward divesting terror

Jun 03, 2005

Building on the momentum of the Center for Security Policy’s Divest Terror campaign, the State of Louisiana this week enacted a new law entitled Act 9 designed to increase transparency with respect to investments by the State’s public pension systems in companies that do business in and with terrorist sponsoring nations.

The Center’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. responded to this development with the following statement: “Louisiana now leads the Nation with respect to assuring that its public pension funds and their beneficiaries are not unwittingly contributing to the financial resources of our enemies in the War on Terror. Gov. Kathleen Blanco and the State Legislature – which took this step at the initiative of Rep. Pete Schneider (R-Slidell) – are to be strongly commended, both for the contribution they are making to mitigate these funds’ exposure to what the Securities and Exchange Commission calls ‘global security risk’ and, we hope, to denying state sponsors of terror the wherewithal they could use to harm Americans.”

The new Louisiana law has three important aspects:

• It requires portfolio managers doing business with the state’s 13 pension systems to screen for companies that do business with terrorist-sponsoring nations, as defined by the U.S. State Department in “Patterns of Global Terrorism: Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and North Korea.”
• It requires state public pension funds to report semi-annually to the legislature on those companies in portfolio that have business ties in Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and North Korea.
• The law also authorizes the state’s 13 pension funds to divest from companies doing business in and with the terrorist-sponsoring nations.

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