The Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund announced that it has stopped working with Thai oil company PTT and its subsidiary PTTOR for having probable links to the Myanmar junta.

The Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund was established in 1990 and is owned by the Norwegian Government. It invests surplus profits from the Norwegian hydrocarbon extraction industry and is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, with capital reserves of about $1.3 trillion USD.

The fund’s ethics council announced on 19 December that the fund would stop working with two Thai companies and an Israeli company for having connections to human rights violations.

The two Thai companies are the Thai government owned energy conglomerate PTT and its subsidiary retail oil company PTTOR. The Norwegian wealth fund’s ethics council said that the two companies had given income to the Myanmar junta which could have used it to fund military operations against, and persecution of civilians.

It said that the wealth fund could not accept the risks of doing business with companies that might directly or indirectly encourage human rights violations in its business partners.

PTT, PTTOR and the Myanmar Military Council did not respond to enquiries on the subject made by Reuters.

The wealth fund also stopped working with the Israeli software company Cognyte which has sold its technology and intelligence tools to customers who commit human rights abuses.