SEATTLE: Major US financial firms are helping fund environmental destruction and indigenous rights abuses in the vast Amazon rainforests with billions of dollars in investments in questionable companies, according to a report published Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila).

Six top firms — BlackRock, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Vanguard, Bank of America and Dimensional Fund Advisors — have invested more than $18 billion over the past three years in mining, agribusiness and energy companies involved in a “series of abuses” in the world’s biggest rainforest, found the report by the environmental group Amazon Watch and the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB).