Wall Street banks boycott Brunei-owned hotels after kingdom makes homosexuality punishable by death

A growing list of multinational banks are banning employees from staying at hotels owned by the sultan of Brunei, where homosexuality and adultery is punishable by death.

J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others — called to task by celebrities such as Elton John, George Clooney and Ellen DeGeneres — have barred staff from staying at properties owned by the Dorchester Collection hotel group, run by the Brunei state-owned investment agency.

The ban includes luxury names such as Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air, and London’s Dorchester and 45 Park Lane.

The news was first reported by the Financial Times. A spokesperson for J.P. Morgan confirmed the report to CNBC but declined to comment further.

Deutsche Bank announced its boycott of Brunei-owned properties in early April as a sign of support for LGBTQ rights. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have confirmed to CNBC that they are no longer using the Dorchester Group. CitiGroup, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley and Nomura have also banned employees from staying at nine luxury hotels owned by the small Southeast Asian nation, according to Financial News Network.

“The new laws introduced by Brunei breach the most basic human rights, and we believe it is our duty as a firm to take action against them,” Stuart Lewis, chief risk officer and member of the management board at Deutsche Bank, said in a statement. “We are proud to support LGBTIQ rights around the world, and as part of this we regularly review our business partnerships to ensure that they are aligned with this principle.”

Earlier this month, Brunei introduced laws that make gay sex punishable by death by stoning. Adultery, rape, sodomy, extramarital sexual relations for Muslims, robbery, and insult or defamation of the Prophet Muhammad are also banned — and prosecuted the same way. Homosexuality has always been illegal in the small, oil-rich nation, but the new, stricter Islamic laws introduce the death penalty as punishment.

In response to the boycotts, the Dorchester Collection said in a statement that they “understand people’s anger and frustration but this is a political and religious issue that we don’t believe should be played out in our hotels and amongst our 3,630 employees.”

Singer Elton John and George Clooney have called for corporate boycotts. In a column published in Deadline last month, Clooney said, while you can’t shame “murderous regimes,” you can “shame the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them and choose to look the other way.”

The United Nations has also condemned the laws. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called them cruel and inhumane punishments that breach international human rights law.

According to Amnesty International, gay sex is a crime in 72 countries and punishable by death in eight, including Saudi Arabia.

Still, in a recent interview Brunei’s billionaire leader, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, who has an estimated $20 billion fortune, called for “stronger” Islamic teachings in the country, according to French news agency AFP.

The sultan has been in power since 1967.

Source: CNBC, Ryan Ruggiero and Donovan Russo, and Holly Ellyatt, April 29, 2019

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005. Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year.

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog