Trafigura’s nice little earner

Trafigura, the oil world’s cheeky chappies, have discovered an new way to make a nice little earner. This time it is by supplying gasoline to the peaceful and strictly non-violent democracy of Syria
According to Euronews oil market dealers confirmed that a Syrian government tender on behalf of state oil company Sytrol for gasoline has been picked up by our loveable rogues Trafigura and Valso itol. Syria exports crude oil, but does not have the refining capacity to meet its domestic needs and relies on petrol imports.

This came as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for an international boycott of Syrian oil and gas products, and sanctions against its oil and gas industries as the best way of putting pressure on the regime to stop its murderous repression of protests there.

Vitol and Trafigura will most likely source the gasoline from Mediterranean refineries in Italy, Spain, or France.

In April this year Vitol was the first company to organise the sale of Libyan oil on behalf of its rebel movement, freighting about 1 million barrels lying idle in Singapore to US refiner Tesoro.

Trafigura, on the other hand, has regularly featured in allegations of corruption and malpractice since its creation in 1993. These include being the first company contracted to sell oil produced in Sudan in 1999, a year after the US bombed Khartoum and had declared the country a state sponsor of terrorism, barring all US companies from doing business with the regime.

Trafigura was also named in the Iraq Oil-for-Food Scandal , and was convicted in Amsterdam in 2010 for illegally dumping toxic waste in Ivory Coast and fined 1 million euros, 2006 Côte d’Ivoire toxic waste dump , which a September 2009 UN report says led to 108,000 people seeking hospital treatment.

In the same year Trafigura tried to prevent reporting of a question in the UK parliament of the Ivory Coast affair in “The Guardian” newspaper by using a “super-injunction” gagging order, and brought a libel suit against the BBC’s “Newsnight” programme for their reporting on the story.

In February this year the public prosecutor in the Netherlands opened an inquiry into allegations Trafigura paid bribes to a leading politician in Jamaica.

I know Trafigura are not doing anything illegal but they have a track record of being amoral bastards in the pursuit of filthy lucre. It just seems that Trafigura’s lucre is particularly filthy.

Perhaps a few months scrubbing one of their tankers by had might change the minds of a few of Trafigura’s execs…

Trafigura scum win libel case against BBC

Despite being ultimately responsible for the dumping of a load of toxic rubbish which cause injury and probably death in the Ivory Coast in 2006, the amoral vermin Trafigura and their vile shysters Carter-Ruck have scored one over the BBC.

After negotiations with Trafigura director Eric de Turckheim the BBC broadcaster agreed to apologise for a Newsnight programme, pay £25,000 to charity, and withdraw any allegation that Trafigura's toxic waste dumped in Africa had caused deaths
That said BBC issued a statement, pointing out that the dumping of Trafigura's hazardous waste had led to the British-based oil trader being forced to pay out £30m in compensation to victims.

"The BBC has played a leading role in bringing to the public's attention the actions of Trafigura in the illegal dumping of 500 tons of hazardous waste" the statement said. "The dumping caused a public health emergency with tens of thousands of people seeking treatment."

Trafigura had only brought the libel action against a single aspect of Newsnight's reporting, the BBC statement went on: "Experts in the [compensation] case were not able to establish a link between the waste and serious long-term consequences, including deaths."

BBC sources said one factor in the management decision to settle was the fear that Carter-Ruck, Trafigura's libel lawyers, could run up potential bills of as much as £3m if the issue came to a full trial, particularly in the uncertain climate of British libel law. A hearing would have to be conducted before controversial libel judge Mr Justice Eady.

De Turckheim issued his own statement this morning, repeating the contentious claim that "The slops were... dumped illegally by an independent company called Compagnie Tommy – a deplorable action which Trafigura did not and could not have foreseen."
This is despite internal emails published by the Guardian show that Trafigura executives were indeed aware of the hazardous nature of their waste, and the need for specialist expensive disposal.

Once again it is clear that Trafigura are a greedy and avaricious company that does not care about the consequences of its actions. There is no way that they did not realise that offering a contract on the cheap in the Third World would not have consequences. Couple these examples of human detritus to another amoral rabble in the form of Carter-Ruck and a risible libel law and you get travesties like this.

From the Trafigura Foundation website

This is from the Home Page of the Trafigura Foundation website:

“Since the very first years, Trafigura and all its employees, deeply conscious of their social responsibilities, have shown a strong commitment to charitable support and philanthropy in the communities where they operate...”

And this is from the “About Us” page of the Trafigura Foundation website:

“Being committed to making our world a better one has at all times been at the heart of Trafigura, be it at the personal level of the employees themselves, or at the global corporate one. During the 15 years of existence of the Group, our people and offices have relentlessly shown loads of imagination, dynamism and energy to organize, contribute to or participate in charitable initiatives, offering many charities and non-profit organizations throughout the world significant resources for furthering their causes.”

But not in Abidjan of course... Words fail...

Trafigura stops suppressing report on Abidjan toxic waste dumping

It was with great pleasure to see the front page of today’s Guardian. The lead story reported on a victory against Carter-Ruck and Trafigura who had tried to suppress a scientific report about toxic waste dumping in West Africa, that was shown to the Guardian.

Yesterday evening Carter-Ruck, libel lawyers for Trafigura, wrote a letter to the Guardian which said the newspaper should regard itself as "released forthwith" from any reporting restrictions. This come after the paper was hit by a "super-injunction" banning all mention of it, despite the fact that it had been the subject of a parliamentary question.

The report, commissioned in September 2006 by Minton Treharne and Davies, said that based on the "limited" information they had been given Trafigura's oil waste, dumped cheaply the month before in a city in Ivory Coast, was potentially toxic, and "capable of causing severe human health effects".

The study said early reports of large scale medical problems among the inhabitants of Abidjan, were consistent with a release of a cloud of potentially lethal hydrogen sulphide gas over the city. The effects could have included severe burns to the skin and lungs, eye damage, permanent ulceration, coma and death.

The author of this initial draft study, John Minton, of consultants Minton, Treharne & Davies, said dumping the waste would have been illegal in Europe and the proper method of disposal should have been a specialist chemical treatment called wet air oxidation.

Trafigura subsequently did not use the report in the personal injury report in the claim against them and did not disclose the report's existence. Trafigura subsequently issued a series of public statements saying the waste had been routinely disposed of and was harmless. Trafigura based this decision on other reports produced from an analysis of the slops obtained from the Probo Koala ship. Trafigura dismissed complaints of illness in a lawsuit brought by 30,000 inhabitants of Abidjan, before being forced last month to pay them £30m in compensation and legal costs in a confidential out of court settlement.

The oil firm then conceded in a public statement that the toxic fumes could have caused "flu-like symptoms" to the inhabitants. But it was accepted in an agreed statement by both sides that expert evidence did not back the more serious claims of deaths, miscarriages or serious injuries, made in previous official statements by the Ivory Coast and British governments and in a UN report.
Before the settlement announcement, Trafigura's lawyers Carter-Ruck obtained a super-injunction from a judge, banning the Guardian not only from revealing the existence of the Minton report, but also from telling anyone about the existence of the injunction.

They said the Minton report was confidential because it had been obtained for possible use in litigation. Trafigura said the report was only preliminary and had proved to be inaccurate. They said hydrogen sulphide in the waste could not have broken down into a dangerous gas after the dumping and that other experts had concluded: "no other chemicals were released in concentrations capable of causing significant harm to human health".

Carter-Ruck was unable to prevent the publication of internal company emails by the Guardian, which confirmed Trafigura executives had been aware in advance that their waste was hazardous, and knew that it ought to have received expensive specialist treatment. Company traders talked about making "serious dollars" from paying someone to take away their "shit".

A statement by Minton, Traherne and Davies indicates that some of the conclusions in the report were incorrect, being based on limited information and was thus redundant.

Even if elements of the report were incorrect, there is one thing that screams out in all of this. Trafigura are, whichever way you look at it, a bunch of amoral money grabbing bastards who almost certainly would not have cared a damn if people would have died so long as it did not affect their profit margin. Had they given a damn in the first place they would have presented the waste for disposal in a matter legal in the European Union. But oh no, that was far too expensive so they looked for a cheaper option involving a bunch of cowboys in West Africa.

No matter how they spin it, this is the act which shows the very worst face of capitalist greed, the bully boy tactics of their lawyers Carter-Ruck highlighted the amorality of their business. Vermin like Trafigura and Carter-Ruck deserve each other. If there was any natural justice in this world it would be them scraping a desperate living in the margins of a Third World shantytown.

Trafigura and Carter-Ruck come a cropper over injunction

I know tthat I am late to this but what the hey...

Recent events have confirmed in my mind that corporate criminals Trafigura and their legal vermin Carter-Ruck exist to give the perverts who sniff bicycle seats someone to look down on. This opinion was strengthened this week when the vile pairing managed to hit another new low when they briefly drove a coach and horses through the right of the Press to report parliamentary proceedings.

By obtaining what is known as a super injunction the corporate criminals and their legal vermin were able to prevent the Guardian from reporting on the following parliamentary question from Labour MP Paul Farrelly the justice secretary, Jack Straw:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura."

Despite it being a public document the Guardian was prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, saying what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian was also forbidden from saying even why it was prevented from reporting parliament. Moreover, the injunction could not be identified nor could the client identified. In fact all that the Guardian could say was that the case involved Carter-Ruck.

According to media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, Lord Denning had ruled in the 1970s that "whatever comments are made in parliament" can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt. This dates back to a ruling in relation to the identity of an officer granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of 'national security'. The Director of Public Prosecutions threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most newspapers published.

The injunction was amended yesterday and the Guardian was them able to publish details of the question.

Today Conservative MP Peter Bottomley stated that he was going to report Carter-Ruck, the law firm that acted on behalf of Trafigura, to the Law Society, saying that no lawyers should be able to inhibit the reporting of parliament.

"I will be seeking their advice on whether it is proper for any lawyer to purport or intend to inhibit the reporting of parliament," he said. "It is the job of the press to make aware to all what is known by a few. Any court action which inhibits that should be approved at a very high level, with full justifications, and in normal circumstances, should not be made in secret."

In a press release yesterday Carter-Ruck, stated “The order would indeed have prevented the Guardian from reporting on the parliamentary question which had been tabled for later this week." However, they accused the Guardian of being "highly misleading" in its reporting.

The role blogosphere and Twitter played in broadcasting this outrage is to be commended. Carter-Ruck claimed that it had not been their intention to block reporting of parliamentary proceedings but it must have been clear that this would be the case; I somehow find this very hard to believe...

Adam Tudor and his minions at Carter-Ruck might wish to consider whether defending the reputation of amoral scum like Trafigura is worth the millions they must earn from it. When you consort with criminals the shit rubs off. It is good to see that their arrogance has backfired on them in the same way that fellow shysters Schillings got two years ago over Craig Murray.

On the other hand there is a piece of shit in Chechnya called Kadyrov who I am sure could benefit from their services. That is a pair that deserve each other!

Trafigura and more pollution problems

Having gotten away with a derisory payment of just £30m to victims of an appalling pollution disaster in Abidjan, the Independent reports that it has refused to co-operate with an investigation into an explosion in a Norwegian fjord involving waste from one of its ships.

Hundreds of residents of the Norwegian village of Slovag fell ill in May 2007 when a huge tank holding waste from low-quality oil processed on behalf of Trafigura caught fire and exploded, leading to one of the worst pollution incidents in Norway's history as a cloud of sulphurous smoke rose over the surrounding area.

A prosecution of three individuals linked to Vest Tank, the Norwegian company which ran the processing operation on Norway's west coast, is due to begin in November and will hear evidence of how Trafigura sent six shipments totalling 150,000 tonnes of cheap and dirty coker gasoline to Slovag in 2006 and 2007.

Trafigura is not being prosecuted in Norway in relation to the explosion and there is no suggestion it was responsible for the disaster. But Norwegian police told The Independent that the company has refused repeated requests to interview a number of its employees involved with the shipments.

Tarjei Istad, a senior investigator from Norway's national economic and environmental crime force Okokrim, said: "As a result of our investigation [into the 2007 explosion] we are interested in speaking to some Trafigura employees who were on the side of the business that dealt with Vest Tank. This has not happened. Trafigura have attempted to set conditions before they decide whether to allow these interviews. Our understanding is that Trafigura is not willing to allow these interviews. We are satisfied we have sufficient evidence from elsewhere, but it is a pity that Trafigura will not agree to co-operate."

The explosion on 24 May 2007 took place after Vest Tank struck a deal with traders in Trafigura's London offices to treat its coker gasoline – bought at bargain prices from Mexico – with caustic soda, so as to create a low-octane petrol. The resulting substance was further treated at a refinery in Estonia to create a fuel with a high sulphur content, which meant it could not be sold in Europe but was permitted for sale in Africa.

The Norwegian authorities allege Vest Tank did not hold the correct permits to carry out the caustic soda "washing" of Trafigura's gasoline or to process the waste from the procedure which contained mercaptan sulphur. Vest Tank insists it did have permission.

The Slovag explosion took place nine months after waste from the Probo Koala, a tanker chartered by Trafigura, was illegally dumped in the Ivory Coast port of Abidjan by a sub-contractor. The foul-smelling waste was produced while the Probo Koala was anchored off Gibraltar conducting the same caustic soda treatment on a cargo of coker gasoline as that used in Norway. Trafigura insists the waste was dumped in Abidjan without its knowledge.

The first Slovag residents knew of the process being conducted at Vest Tank's terminal was when a plume of mercaptan-laden smoke rose into the air. Norwegian authorities said hundreds of people fell ill.

A spokesman for Trafigura said it would not comment on a continuing investigation, adding: "Trafigura complied fully with the relevant regulations in its dealings with Vest Tank's owners."

Trafigura have denied any responsibility for the pollution problems in Ivory Coast, expressing utter shock that the contractor disposed of their waste irresponsibly. I’m sure they are just as “horrified” at event in Norway. But then their dealings in the dregs of the oil business gives some indication of the measure of the company: a bunch of unprincipled bottom feeders.

I would like to think that their reputation is mud but I can only imagine that among their peers they are nothing special.

Trafigura gets away with a small change settlement

The BBC reported yesterday that 30,000 victims of the Trafigura-caused toxic waste disaster in Abidjan are being offered £1,000 each in compensation.

The payout offer amounts to about £30m in total – a little over more than 10% of Trafigura's declared annual profits. Trafigura also provided £100m to the government of Ivory Coast in 2007 to pay for a clean-up and to make some payments to the families of 16 people who had died.

The confidential negotiations are likely to include a further payment for the costs of the British law firm Leigh Day, which took on the case on a no-win, no-fee basis and is thought to have risked more than £10m. Leigh Day's original claim for the victims was for another £100m, which would have given them just over £3,000 each.

Marvin Outtarra, described as the president of the Union of Victims of Toxic Waste, told Reuters: "This compensation to be shared equally among all the victims doesn't work for me. Trafigura has given no compensation to the families of the deceased and the amount of compensation of 750,000 CFA francs does not vary based on the severity of the injuries." London-based Trafigura declared profits of $440m (£270m) last year on turnover of more than $70bn. Its traders are reported to receive annual bonuses of up to $1m.

On a happier note Yesterday’s Observer said it would continue legal action against Trafigura. The organisation wants Trafigura prosecuted for manslaughter and grievous bodily harm, citing documents it says demonstrate the waste's high toxicity. Trafigura also faces a Dutch prosecution for allegedly lying about the true nature of its waste.

Greenpeace said of Trafigura's strategy: "Justice is not a commodity to be bought and sold: only when those who are responsible are prosecuted under the full force of the law and made to pay for their crime will environmental legislation become a force to be reckoned with."

The Ivorian National Federation of Victims, which says it represents nearly all the victims, accused Trafigura of trying to avert a public trial. Denis Pipira Yao, the group's president, told Reuters in Abidjan: "As people are poor in Africa, Trafigura is using money to get away with it."

I hope this derisory settlement is not the last we hear of this. It would be good to read of Turckheim’s imprisonment on manslaughter charges and the bankruptcy of this amoral rabble. Sadly I won’t hold my breath.

Trafigura open, candid and honest (hahaha)

The more I read about the awful events in Abidjan three years ago, the more I see Trafigura resorting to high priced lawyers to suppress any criticism of their actions. Over the past couple of years it has launched attacks on the Dutch and Norwegian press, forced an apology from the Times, demanded that the Guardian take down articles about the story and launched a libel case against the BBC

On 13 May Newsnight carried the Probo Koala story: I won’t repeat everything that was reported but here are the main points

Trafigura has always denied that the chemical waste was dangerous, but we have seen an analysis by the Dutch authorities which reveal it to be lethal.

Newsnight consulted a leading toxicologist, John Hoskins from the Royal Society of Chemistry. He said it would bring a major city to its knees. The waste includes tons of phenols which can cause death by contact, tons of hydrogen sulphide, lethal if inhaled in high concentrations and vast quantities of corrosive caustic soda and mercaptans which John Hoskins describes as "the most odorous compounds ever produced".

Reporters met Jean Francois Kouadio and his wife, Fidel. She had been eight months pregnant with their first child when the fumes swamped their home. Fidel gave birth prematurely and the boy, Jean Claude, died within a day. Their second child Ama Grace was born a year later. She too fell ill. The doctors said that Ama Grace "was suffering from acute glycaemia caused by the toxic wastes". They could do nothing for her and she died.

The medical reports state a "strong presumption" that the deaths of the two children were caused by exposure to the toxic waste and Jean Francois and Fidel now fear they will never become parents.

The reporters also visited the village of Djibi, just outside Abidjan. The head of Djibi, Esaie Modto, told us that every last person there fell ill, two thousand people: "There were women who miscarried, and that was very painful. But still, the worst was that three people, two adults and a girl were killed by the toxic wastes. That was very hard."

When Newsnight first investigated the toxic dumping scandal in 2007 one of Trafigura's founders Eric de Turckheim told Jeremy Paxman "these materials were not dangerous for human beings. It was smelly, but not dangerous."

The BBC also carried a statement from Trafigura date also 13 April, I won’t repeat statements available in other posts but here Trafigura stated categorically:

• The Probo Koala's slops were a mixture of gasoline, water and caustic soda. According to analyses that Trafigura has seen, it is not possible that the content of the slops could have led to the deaths and widespread injuries which are alleged to have been caused by them. This is supported by independent expert evidence which Trafigura will present in the English High Court in autumn 2009.

• Trafigura's own investigations did reveal that people living in the village of Akouedo (one of the places where the Probo Koala's slops were dumped by Compagnie Tommy) have suffered significant long-term health issues caused by over 40 years of commercial and domestic waste dumping. However, it does not know and will not speculate publicly as to where this waste originated.

• Trafigura has always said that the appropriate place for this case to be heard is in court and we are not prepared to engage in a trial by media. Whilst we refute your allegations, in the light of the impending court hearing, Trafigura does not feel it is appropriate to deal with these matters via the media. We will demonstrate the strength of our case when the trial commences in the autumn."

Despite this Trafigura’s lawyer Carter Ruck and its PR company issued the following joint press release on 15 May 2009 stating that the company would sue the BBC for Libel

• Trafigura Limited has today issued proceedings for libel against the BBC in the High Court in London. The action relates to a broadcast on the Newsnight programme on 13 May 2009 and three related stories on the BBC website, concerning the Probo Koala, a Trafigura-chartered vessel which discharged slops in Côte d’Ivoire in August 2006.
• However, the BBC’s one-sided reports on 13 May were wildly inaccurate and libellous, leaving us with no choice but to take legal action. There was no justification or public interest in the BBC misleading its viewers in this way.
• Trafigura has always denied that the slops caused the deaths and serious health consequences presented by the BBC – a position fully supported by independent expert evidence which will be presented to the Court in due course.

Once again we saw a high powered company using our ridiculous libel laws to suppress valid public interest stories. We saw it with Schillings and their counterproductive attempts to muzzle Craig Murray and Tim Ireland over Alisher Usmanov’s decidedly murky past. Trafigura used Carter-Ruck and the PR firm Bell Pottinger to stifle a vital news story.

The key contacts in the above release were Adam Tudor (Carter-Ruck) and Neil Cameron (Bell Pottinger). I wonder how they feel about the recent press reports which make it clear that Trafigura were lying all along. If I were either one of them I would feel pretty uncomfortable about dealing any further with the company. But then I am not an amoral shit who has no problem in taking on tainted cash.

Trafigura – Liars in the pursuit of filthy money

Count Eric de Turckheim Corporate Criminal

Trafigura have denied that they knowingly were involved in any wrong doing in respect of the dumping of waste in the Ivory Coast in 2006. My previous post sets out the company’s position as of yesterday. Basically Trafigura denies that the slops within the vessel the Probo Koala could not have caused fatalities or injuries (ie not dangerous), there was no plan to dump waste West Africa and besides everything was the fault of some Africans (so it really doesn’t count at all I suppose)

According to the website Newsnight revealed that the company knew exactly that the waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006 was hazardous. Furthermore there are smoking gun emails to support the point. Please go to the link above to view the emails. They are also available on the Guardian website.

Probo Koala

The chemical waste came from a ship called Probo Koala and in August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was illegally fly-tipped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast.

The story began four years ago at an oil refinery in Mexico, owned by the state company Pemex, or PMI.. In its chemical processes the refinery was producing a by-product - coker naptha, a dirty form of gasoline which could not be treated on site.



The e-mails which Newsnight has obtained reveal that Trafigura executives realised they could make a fortune by buying the dirty Mexican oil for next to nothing.One e-mail says: "This is as cheap as anyone can imagine and should make serious dollars."

However, to sell it on at a profit, Trafigura first had to find a cheap way to clean the coker naptha and lower its sulphur levels. Trafigura chartered the Probo Koala and while the ship was off the coast of Gibraltar poured tons of caustic soda and a catalyst into the dirty oil to clean it - a rough and ready process known as "caustic washing". The method is cheap, but it generates such dangerous waste that it is effectively banned in most places around the world.

The e-mails obtained by Newsnight show that in the months before the waste was dumped the company knew about the difficulties they would face in disposing of the waste. "This operation is no longer allowed in the European Union, the United States and Singapore" it is "banned in most countries due to the 'hazardous nature of the waste'", one e-mail warns.



Another e-mail points out that "environmental agencies do not allow disposal of the toxic caustic".The process left a toxic sulphurous sludge in the tanks of the Probo Koala.
Claiming that the waste was simply tank washings - the standard oil-water mixture produced by routine tank cleaning - Trafigura attempted to offload the waste in the Netherlands. However, when the waste was offloaded the smell was so strong, the emergency services were called. Samples were taken and Trafigura was told the waste was toxic and would cost hundreds of thousands of euros to treat safely.

However, Trafigura opted for the much cheaper option of reloading the waste and taking it elsewhere. It ultimately ended up in Ivory Coast. Evidence seen by Newsnight shows that knowledge of the waste and problems getting rid of it went to the very top of Trafigura and the company's President Claude Dauphin. The Trafigura e-mails say that Mr Dauphin was urging his team to "be creative" in how they dealt with the hazardous waste.

The contractor that they found in the end was Solomon Ugburogbu, the owner of a company called Tommy, which had no facilities to handle hazardous waste. Ugburogbu, is now serving a 20 year sentence for poisoning local people.

Trafigura has always denied and continues to deny any liability for events that occurred in Ivory Coast.In a statement to Newsnight on Wednesday the company said: "With regard to Trafigura's proposals for handling the treatment and disposal of the slops, Trafigura always sought to comply with the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which it operates."

The Quote The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.is attributed to Joseph Stalin. He may or may have not said it. Let me paraphrase the quote “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a few Africans is just Trafigura making a dirty profit.

Victim (from the New York Times)

I would like Count Eric de Turckheim and his amoral minions to look this child Salam Oudrawogol in the eyes and say that they were not responsible from his pain. But then I suppose another lie would trip easy off their tongues...

Probo Koala - A Statement by Trafigura

Yesterday Trafigura included the following points in a statement of position about the dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan. It is was an addendum to a joint statement between the company and Leigh Day & Co in respect of a legal action being pursued by the latter against the former on behalf of Ivorian citizens who were affected by the dumping incident:

Following media enquiries and comments, Trafigura reiterates its long-held position as follows:

* The company has always maintained that the Probo Koala’s slops could not possibly have caused deaths and serious or long term injuries. Independent expert witnesses firmly support Trafigura in this stance.

* Although it was agreed by both parties that the UK group action case would only focus on causation, Trafigura has always denied and continues to deny any liability for events that occurred in the Ivory Coast. The company sought at all times to comply with all relevant regulations and procedures concerning the offloading of the Probo Koala’s slops in Abidjan. Compagnie Tommy was a fully licensed contractor, recommended to Trafigura by an experienced and reputable Ivorian shipping agent to handle the slops in a legal and responsible manner. Consequently, Trafigura cannot have foreseen the reprehensible and illegal way in which Compagnie Tommy then proceeded to dump the slops.

* Trafigura has consistently stated that the Probo Koala was returning from a routine commercial voyage to deliver a gasoline cargo in Lagos, Nigeria, when it stopped in Abidjan. Consequently, any suggestion that the vessel was sent to West Africa solely for the purpose of offloading its slops is entirely inaccurate.

The next post shows that they are liars

Trafigura - Corporate Criminals

This is taken from the lead story in today’s Independent. I want to find out more about this but initial reading indicates that Trafigura are the lowest form of scum.

A British oil trading giant has agreed to a multimillion-pound payout to settle a huge damages claim from thousands of Africans who fell ill from tonnes of toxic waste dumped illegally in one of the worst pollution incidents in decades.

Trafigura, a London-based company which bills itself as one of the world's largest oil traders, said it was in talks to reach a "global settlement" to the claim by 30,000 people from Ivory Coast, who brought Britain's largest-ever lawsuit after contaminated sludge from a tanker ship was fly-tipped under cover of darkness in August 2006.

The incident caused at least 100,000 residents from the west African country's capital Abidjan, to flood into hospitals and clinics complaining of breathing difficulties and sickness. Investigations by the Ivorian authorities suggested that the deaths of at least 10 people were linked to the waste. Trafigura has always insisted the foul-smelling slurry, dumped without its knowledge by a sub-contractor, could not have caused serious injury or illness.

The bitterly contested legal action has seen Trafigura repeatedly deploy one of Britain's most aggressive firms of lawyers to dispute reporting on the case by media outlets including the BBC. Under the deal, thousands of Ivorians who suffered short-term illnesses, including vomiting, diarrhoea and breathing difficulties, receive a payout understood to be set at several hundred pounds.

But the settlement, which is likely to be confirmed by the end of this month, will mean that claims of more serious injuries caused by the waste – including miscarriages, still births and birth defects – will now not be tested in the £100m court claim, which had been scheduled to start in London's High Court next month.

Trafigura, a privately-owned multinational which has 1,900 staff working in 42 offices around the world, last year claimed a turnover of $73bn (£44bn). The figure is double the entire GDP of Ivory Coast, where half the population of 21 million live on less than a dollar a day.
Internal Trafigura emails, obtained by Greenpeace, show that Trafigura struck a series of bargains on the international markets in 2005 and early 2006 to buy cheap and dirty petroleum, called coker gasoline, which the company believed could then be cleaned up at profit of £4m per cargo.

Rather than send the oil to a refinery, Trafigura used the Probo Koala, a Panamanian tanker chartered by the company since 2004, as a floating processing plant while it was anchored off Gibraltar. Using an ad hoc process of adding caustic soda and a catalyst to the coker gasoline, the oil was "cleaned" to produce a sellable fuel and a toxic sludge which sank to the bottom of the ship's tanks.

The precise composition of the waste is strongly disputed, with Trafigura vigorously denying it contained high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide, a potentially lethal poisonous gas. Problems began for Trafigura when it needed to dispose of the slurry. When the Probo Koala arrived in Amsterdam in July 2006 and tried to unload the contaminated slops, allegedly described as "watery cleaning liquids", the process caused a health alert and Trafigura was informed the cost of dealing with its by-product would rise from £17 per cubic metre to £800.
Rather than pay the estimated bill of £500,000, Trafigura ordered the waste to be pumped back on to the Probo Koala and the vessel travelled to west Africa laden with a cargo of unleaded petrol collected from a supplier in Estonia.

The first the four million inhabitants of Abidjan knew of their role in Trafigura's project was after darkness on 19 August 2006. A fleet of 12 trucks hired by a local waste contractor, Compagnie Tommy, which had only received its operating licence weeks earlier, offloaded the sulphurous sludge from the cargo vessel and deposited the waste at 18 locations around thecity. Hospital records showed that within hours thousands of patients were treated for complaints including nausea, breathlessness, headaches, skin reactions and a range of ear, nose, throat and pulmonary problems.

A United Nations report yesterday found that "there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping". The study by the UN special rapporteur on human rights Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu levelled a series of criticisms against Trafigura, including claims that it had failed to check the ability of Compagnie Tommy to deal properly with the waste. The report said that Trafigura went ahead with the arrangement despite being told by Tommy that it intended to dispose of the sludge at Akouedo, a vast open-air waste site where hundreds of Ivorians earn a living by picking over the rubbish. Professor Ibeanu said: "Akouedo was not in any way equipped to treat the waste from the Probo Koala."

Bell-Pottinger, the London PR company working for Trafigura, responded by saying the report was "inaccurate" and "potentially damaging".

In a statement, Trafigura said: "The company has always maintained that the Probo Koala's slops could not possibly have caused deaths and serious or long-term injuries. Independent expert witnesses firmly support Trafigura in this stance.

"Compagnie Tommy was a fully-licensed contractor recommended to Trafigura by an experienced and reputable Ivorian shipping agent to handle the slops in a legal and responsible manner. Consequently, Trafigura cannot have foreseen the reprehensible and illegal way in which Compagnie Tommy then proceeded to dump the slops."

“Trafigura cannot have foreseen the reprehensible and illegal way in which Compagnie Tommy then proceeded to dump the slops." Oh for Christ’s Sake does Trafigura think we were born yesterday. When it decided not to pay £500k to clean out the Probo Loala’s tanks properlybut send it to West Africa if knew full well what it was doing. I hope that the company is taken to teh cleaners at the courts next month

Perhaps Bell-Pottinger (its PR firm) and Carter-Ruck (its law firm) can find better employment promoting and defending the integrity of the pile of dog shit at the corner of my street. Somehow I doubt that the dog shit would want to associate itself with such bottom feeders.