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Swedish national pensions fund gets rid of its Wal-Mart shares, says workers' rights violations are systematic Sweden pulls its pensions money away from Wal-Mart. In a press statement issued in Stockholm yesterday, Sweden's Second National Pensions Fund - Andra AP-Fonden - says that all its shares and obligations in Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Mexico have been sold. - Wal-Mart has so many reported incidents concerning violations of norms both in its own activities and in the supply chain that there is no doubt that there is a systematic that is unethical when we look at the activities, says Eva Halvarsson, the CEO of the Pensions Fund. The large Swedish Second National Pensions Fund refers to the extensive material compiled by Norway's Council on Ethics, which had earlier this year advised the neighbouring country's public pension fund to get rid of its Wal-Mart stock. The Norwegian Finance Minister Kirsten Halvorsen followed the recommendation in June, referring to Wal-Mart's human rights violations. She said that keeping the Wal-Mart shares "entails an unacceptable risk that the Fund may be complicit in serious... violations of norms." The Swedish disinvestment follows attempts by the Fund since 2003 to influence Wal-Mart to change its approach to workers' rights. Any such change has not been forthcoming, according to the press statement.
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