source: Rights Action
Late on March 2, 2016, a death squad burst into the home of Berta Caceres in Honduras, shot and killed her in her bedroom. Her killing was directly related to a struggle going on globally over who controls land, territories, forests and rivers, and whose interests do economic investments serve. Her killing was also related to a Canada-based corporate consultants’ signature that allegedly helped money flow to a hydro-electric dam project and to the killers.
In January 2026, a comprehensive report about Berta’s killing was published by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI). As part of their deep dive into who were the msterminds and financiers (“intellectual authors”) of the crime, the GIEI paid attention to the role that Monkey Forest Consulting Limited (MFC) played.
Why focus on MFC ten years after the assassination of Berta?
It ws not until the publishing of the GIEI report that I learned that MFC had worked with the investors and companies implicated in the killing of Berta.
Similarly, I did not learn of MFC’s involvement with the notorious Fenix mine in Maya Q’eqchi’ territories of Guatemala until revelations made eleven years later during the Hudbay Minerals lawsuits in Canada. In that situation of corporate-linked death and violence, MFC’s involvement, as I set out briefly below, overlapped with the gang-rapes of eleven Maya Q’eqchi’ women in 2007 who later became plaintiffs in the Hudbay lawsuits.
At a minimum, the statements and actions of “corporate consulting” firms, such as MFC, should be investigated and exposed, particularly when violence and destruction are linked to the decisions and actions of the companies and investors they are hired by. From there, depending on the circumstances, questions should be asked about whether they can – and should – be held legally accountable for complicity in the particular violence and destruction.
As summarized below, the GIEI report raises pointed questions about what MFC employees/consultants might have known about the Berta Caceres assassination plot? What roles MFC might have played to facilitate the plot? And whether MFC financially benefited?
Berta Caceres
Berta was a well-respected indigenous rights, land and environmental defender. She was a leader in Honduran and regional movements in resistance to imperialist interventions and to the corruption, exploitation and violence of global companies, banks and investors.
After the U.S. and Canadian-supported coup in 2009 brought to power the military-backed, drug-trafficking governments of Presidents Pepe Lobo and Juan Orlando Hernandez, Berta became a leading voice in opposition to their post-coup repression, corruption and impunity, and to their “open for global business” agenda.
Berta was a dear friend of those of us in Rights Action. Since 1998, Rights Action supported work spearheaded by Berta and the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), an organization she co-founded.
Agua Zarca dam
One of the investment projects initiated with global investors in the post-2009 coup climate was the Agua Zarca hydro-electric dam being forcibly built along the Gualcarque River. The dam project would have negative environmental, human rights, social and economic impacts in indigenous Lenca communities and lands where COPINH does community education, organizing and land defense work.
Berta and COPINH took a lead role in this land, rights and environmental defense struggle, which brought them into direct conflict with the oligarchic Atala Zablah family - the driving Honduran force behind the project.
“Material” to “intellectual authors”
As devastating as her assassination was, it surprised no one that Berta’s children, family members and COPINH immediately began the hard and dangerous work to expose the truth about what happened and demand that justice be brought to bear on all people and institutions involved.
Notwithstanding the violence, corruption and impunity characterizing the post-2009 coup governments and judiciary, Berta’s family, COPINH and supporters made serious headway in the struggle for truth and justice. Ten years later, eight material authors of her killing – coordinators and members of the death squad – had been put on trial, found guilty and jailed.
It also became clear over the years that members of the powerful, wealthy Atala Zablah family were some of the main “intellectual authors” – the people who decided Berta must be eliminated and got the money for it.
The closer Berta’s family, COPINH and supporters got to the intellectual authors, the harder the struggle got.
Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts
Such was the tenacity of the justice struggle that in 2025 an Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) was established through an agreement between the government of President Xiomara Castro, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), and representatives of Berta’s family and COPINH, as beneficiaries of IACHR Precautionary Measures.
The GIEI was tasked with investigating all events linked to Berta’s assassination and to provide support to the Honduran State to investigate the material and particularly the intellectual authors of Berta’s killing, and other related crimes. The GIEI’s 524 page “report on the murder of human rights defender Berta Cáceres, related crimes and comprehensive reparation measures” was published on January 12, 2026.
Monkey Forest Consulting Limited: “Preparing communities for complex change”
What caught my eye was the focus of the GIEI on the Canada-based MFC that was hired to conduct on-site assessments and provide compliance reports monitoring the Agua Zarca project being built by the DESA company (Desarrollos Energéticos S.A.). DESA was controlled by the Atala Zablah family and former Honduran military officer David Castillo (who had served in the Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Department of the Armed Forces, and been trained at the West Point U.S. Military Academy).
MFC is a private company of “social performance and environmental specialists” hired by global corporations to help them “prepare communities for complex change”. As part of this work, MFC also offers “security advisory” services.
MFC and gang-rapes linked to Skye Resources (Hudbay Minerals)
Before looking at the GIEI report’s focus on MFC and the killing of Berta, I think it helpful to look briefly at work MFC did with Skye Resources (later bought and amalgamated into Hudbay Minerals) at the notorious Fenix mine operation in Guatemala. As stated above, I only learned of the work of MFC during the landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits in Canada.
See Rights Action’s report: 13 BRAVE GIANTS-How we won the landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits in Canada and the Mynor Padilla criminal trial in Guatemala, and at what cost!”
MFC worked for Skye Resources leading up to the illegal forced evictions -burning and destruction- of six Maya Q’eqchi’ villages in late 2006, early 2007. During the burning and destruction of the Lote Ocho village on January 17, 2007, company security guards, Guatemalan soldiers and police gang-raped eleven Q’eqchi’ women villagers, who later joined German Chub and Angelica Choc as plaintiffs in the Hudbay lawsuits.
While the “complex change” MFC was paid to prepare the Q’eqchi’ communities for could not have been worse, and MFC’s work should be further investigated and exposed for that alone, from the small amount of documents made public during the lawsuits it appears that MFC’s role was advisory, and that nothing MFC did had direct bearing on the financing of the Fenix mine operation.
MFC and assassination of Berta
In contrast, the role MFC played leading up to the killing of Berta went beyond that of advising DESA about community relations, etc., to apparently occupying a critical position in the accessing of international financing that facilitated the killing of Berta, and providing “security training” to DESA personnel as opposition to the project kept growing.
What follows is an attempt, based mainly on the GIEI report, to summarize MFC's role, encompassing verification duties and certification function, communications strategy, security advisory activities and direct contact with individuals later convicted as coordinators and material authors in the assassination plot. (Quotes from the GIEI report have been translated by me from Spanish).
Deliberately false certifications?
In 2014, MFC was contracted to provide independent verification of DESA’s compliance with an Environmental and Social Action Plan governing the Agua Zarca project. Under the loan agreement between DESA and international lenders (Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE), Netherlands Development Finance Institution (FMO), Finnfund), each disbursement of funds required the submission of an Environmental and Social Advisor Certificate to assure the lenders that DESA was implementing the Plan.
Three months before the killing of Berta, MFC’s chair and founder Gary MacDonald issued a certificate on December 4, 2015, clearing the way for the third disbursement of funds (U$2.6 million), affirming that, to the extent applicable, DESA (borrower) and the Agua Zarca project were "implementing all the actions described in the Environmental and Social Action Plan and are complying with its priority actions." The same certification document acknowledged DESA had not completed required actions and that risks identified in MFC's September 2015 monitoring report "remain in effect."
The GIEI report characterizes this as a “deliberate falsehood”. MFC certified compliance for a project that had never conducted free, prior, and informed consultation with the affected Lenca communities — a fact MFC would have known given its monitoring work and awareness of the conflict between DESA and the communities.
Furthermore, the MFC maintained that there were no legal disputes over the ancestral Lenca land where the dam was going to be built. The MFC knew of a human rights complaint presented to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and knew of COPINH's well-documented objections to the project.
And the MFC would have known that there had already been murders of COPINH members in Rio Blanco. For example, Tomas García was killed on July 15, 2013 by the Honduran military guarding DESA’s headquarters in Lenca territories where the Agua Zarca dam was to be built. His son, Allan was injured in the same attack.
Follow the money
The GIEI was able to trace the financial chain from the December 4 disbursement through DESA's corporate shell structure to three checks (totaling 500,000 Lempiras, approximately U$24,000) cashed within 48 hours of Berta’s assassination to pay the killers.
According to the report, approximately 67% of the $18.5 million disbursed over the life of international funding was diverted or irregularly handled. MFC's “occupied a critical position” as one of the gates through which this money passed.
For its services, MFC received at least $72,752 and €32,454 across multiple payments, between July 2014 and January 2016.
Security services
MFC's work for DESA extended beyond environmental and social monitoring, auditing and certifying compliance, to what the GIEI describes as military-oriented security consultation work.
A memorandum recovered from a computer seized during the May 2016 raid on DESA's offices — a computer presumed to have been used by Daniel Atala, a member of the Atala Zablah family and DESA’s financial manager — documents a "security capacity development" program delivered to DESA by MFC representatives over three days (April 14–16, 2015).
Former Honduran and U.S. military employed by MFC
MFC personnel involved in this security training program included Jorge Acosta, a former Honduran Army officer who had served in the First Special Forces Battalion, as a security detail officer to the President of Honduras, and as a liaison officer with a U.S. Army Engineer Battalion. The program also included Tom Green, a former member of the U.S. Army.
The recovered memo records that the training covered: use of "moderate force before, during, and after a possible confrontation, including the weapons with which security personnel will be equipped"; coordination with the National Police at both senior and operational levels, including "the conditions DESA must provide them, the type and frequency of communication DESA will maintain with them, logistical support and training they must receive from DESA"; evaluation of the contracted security provider's performance; "possible attack tactics that the opposition might use, their management and response"; and "possible attack scenarios at the works and how to react to them."
Lenca communities as a threat
The GIEI observes that this framework treated the Lenca communities as a threat requiring tactical responses, rather than presenting the framework as a complicated social, economic, land conflict requiring proper engagement. The GIEI points out that the framing of this training was at odds with the Environmental and Social Action Plan that MFC was certifying DESA was complying with.
Communications with material authors of Berta’s killing
The GIEI report sets out that Jorge Acosta had direct communications with three DESA personnel implicated in the murder of Berta. Between April 11-29, 2015, Acosta had seven calls with Jorge Avila (head of security), seven with David Castillo (executive officer) who was convicted as a co-author of the murder, and fourteen with Sergio Rodríguez (environmental and social manager) who was convicted for his role in the killing.
The timing of these MFC communications with these DESA corporate officers is noteworthy given that on April 20, 2015, Berta was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, drawing additional media attention to the human rights, environmental, and land conflicts Berta was involved with, particularly the Agua Zarca project.
Beyond these call records, the GIEI documented WhatsApp exchanges between Jorge Acosta and Sergio Rodriguez. On September 16, 2015, Acosta asked Rodríguez for Jorge Ávila's phone number, specifying it was "for the training." On February 5, 2016, twenty-six days before Berta’s assassination, Acosta wrote to Rodríguez stating the he (Jorge Acosta) is waiting for "the 27-day crisis report."
Delegitimizing of COPINH and Berta
The GIEI report documents a further dimension of MFC's work. Between 2014 and 2016, MFC's monitoring reports included content the GIEI characterizes as delegitimizing COPINH, the Lenca communities, and Berta personally.
MFC's initial site evaluation (June 27, 2014) warned that DESA had allowed COPINH and its allies to "control almost entirely the public narrative" and recommended that DESA recover the narrative through an active presence in the media, social media, and digital platforms. MFC recommended the creation of a bilingual website presenting "the reality of the project from the company's perspective," the development of messaging to "counter disinformation" about the project's impact on indigenous rights, and the strengthening of information campaigns to neutralize accusations of human rights violations.
MFC set out that the Lenca communities’ land claims were "weak" and "opportunistic," and framed indigenous rights concerns related to the project as matters of "reputational risk" to DESA and "could be reduced through an effective international communications strategy." Opposition to the project was characterized as based on "emotional and simplistic narratives."
The GIEI report concludes that MFC encouraged the dissemination of messages that discredited COPINH and its representativeness, and framed their work in defense of Lenca territory as a threat to progress — messages subsequently replicated in national media, paid advertisements, and government statements.
Conclusions and recommended investigations
The GIEI believes the evidence permits the conclusion that MFC's leadership had full knowledge of the escalating conflict with the Lenca people but limited its response to managing the situation through security experts and training rather than monitoring the overall situation and pushing DESA to address the underlying social, economic, land situation and the increasing human rights crisis. Knowing all this, MFC leadership still issued the certificates required to enable the release of funds.
The GIEI characterizes MFC's work as designed to confer on DESA an "appearance of legality" and compliance before institutional, financial, and regulatory actors. In turn, this appearance of legality and compliance enabled the continuation of the financing that was diverted to fund surveillance, repression, and ultimately to Berta’s assassination.
The GIEI recommends that investigators determine whether the amounts paid to MFC corresponded to market rates for the services rendered, and that MFC make available all corporate emails and communications of MFC employees involved in and responsible for the work with DESA between 2012 and 2016, along with any internal MFC investigations into their own conduct.
And given the security tasks performed by MFC personnel, the GIEI recommends further investigation be undertaken into the specific activities carried out in connection with the security training provided to DESA's personnel.
MFC to face justice in Canadian courts?
All support must continue to go to Berta’s family and COPINH as they continue to pursue justice against the masterminds and financiers, even as the political context in Honduran has taken a terrible turn for the worse following upon the U.S. trashing of the November 2025 electoral and returning to power the same economic, political and military elites that had been in power from 2009-2022.
Even as MFC itself and other actors involved (DESA, international investors, etc.) assuredly have more information about MFC’s role, with just what the GIEI has revealed about the role played by MFC in this murderous tale, it is legitimate to ask whether MFC and its personnel could – and should – be pursued legally in Canadian courts, as a corporation and/or individually, for acting in a willfully blind, negligent or even a criminally negligent manner?
