They Don’t Want You To See This
I’ll let Charlie Brooker kick things off:
charltonbrooker Gimme a T! Gimme an R! Gimme an AFIGURA! http://bit.ly/4fDKNR #trafigura
WikiLeaks believes the Guardian was gagged to prevent it reporting the following parliamentary question:
- Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) – 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.[1]
Want to read the Minton Report? Here it is. Its findings?
It’s all about Trafigura’s involvement with toxic waste in the Ivory Coast. I quote:
[But the] dozens of damning internal Trafigura emails which have now come to light reveal how traders were told in advance that their planned chemical operation, a cheap and dirty process called “caustic washing”, generated such dangerous wastes that it was widely outlawed in the west.
The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of $7m a time by buying up what they called “bloody cheap” cargoes of sulphur-contaminated Mexican gasoline. They decided to try to process the fuel on board a tanker anchored offshore, creating toxic waste they called “slops”.
One trader wrote on 10 March 2006: “I don’t know how we dispose of the slops and I don’t imply we would dump them, but for sure, there must be some way to pay someone to take them.” The resulting black, stinking, slurry was eventually dumped around landfills in Abidjan, after Trafigura paid an unqualified local man to take it away in tanker trucks at a cheap rate.
You are encouraged to express your thoughts here about an oil trader known to have committed an act of industrial pollution, using a libel law firm to prohibit reporting from parliament, on a report it doesn’t want you to know about.
UPDATE: Mr Justice Sweeney signed the gagging order.
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