What’s The Truth Behind the Trafigura Witnesses?
Links to my previous posts:
and here
Trafigura’s Compensation Must Reach the Victims
Oil traders Trafigura have gone to a great deal of effort to make the story about toxic waste dumping in Ivory Coast go away – from using law firm Carter-Ruck to initiate libel proceedings against the Guardian and BBC, to attempting to stop questions about it being raised in the House of Commons. They’ve even paid $45 million to Ivory Coast in compensation to 30,000 victims (which was on top of $200 paid to the government for the clean-up operation), but even that is far from the end of the story:
A court in the Ivory Coast has ruled that compensation due to thousands of victims of dumped waste should not be paid to one man to distribute.
Oil trading company Trafigura had agreed to pay $45m (£27m) to 30,000 victims in an out-of-court settlement.
Claude Ghourou argued he should be given responsibility for the money, but there were doubts he would pass it on.
However, despite the ruling the money remains blocked and victims cannot yet gain access to their compensation.
Before the ruling Amnesty International intervened, urging:
the authorities in Côte d’Ivoire to ensure that £27 million compensation paid by the oil trading company Trafigura to victims of one of the worst toxic dumping scandals in recent years reaches the people to whom it is owed.
Amnesty has also written to the UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw, urgently asking him to contact his counterpart in the Côte d’Ivoire to press for swift action to prevent a potentially massive fraud being perpetrated. The call came as thousands of the victims of the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan, capital of Côte d’Ivoire, wait anxiously to receive their money.
It Wasn’t Just Ivory Coast…
The impression has no doubt been given that the whole Trafigura/Carter-Ruck affair has centred around the dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. But identical waste was shipped to Norway that year too:
Oil-trader Trafigura is under police investigation in Norway, accused of illegal import of waste. The waste was brought to Norway on the Probo Emu in 2006, and is identical to the waste that Trafigura shipped to the Ivory Coast on the Probo Koala.
The Norwegian police have been investigating Trafigura for more than a year and a half, but so far nobody in the company has been willing to give statement or answer questions from the Norwegian police.
– We are surprised, and have the impression that Trafigura is not interested in assisting in the investigation, says Hans Tore Høviskeland, head of prosecution in Økokrim.
It’s not just allegations of the illegal import of identical waste. Because of a ‘blunder’ by Trafigura’s subcontractor Vest Tank, similar waste from on-shore caustic washing exploded, with severe consequences:
Trafigura, the British oil trading giant which agreed to pay £30m to the victims of one of Africa’s worst pollution disasters, has failed to co-operate with an investigation into an explosion in a Norwegian fjord involving waste from one of its ships, The Independent can reveal.
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.
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) report that Trafigura have so far refused to answer why they chose to perform caustic washing in Sløvåg, when it’s illegal in the EU (which Norway is not a member state of). They also have refused to answer why the Probo Emu failed to apply for import permits for the earlier waste, and failed to notify Norwegian environmental authorities of its arrival.
So before you start believing their backtracking from the legal mess they’re responsible for in the UK, with their super injunctions, crude attacks on parliament and the freedom of speech, consider where their responsibility for both disasters lay. The Norwegian authorities claim Vest Tank didn’t even have the correct permits to carry out caustic washing and waste processing, which Vest Tank deny - it’s all remarkably similar to the situation in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where Trafigura have also denied any responsibility for their subcontractor there dumping the identically toxic waste in populated areas. Solomon Ugburogbu’s company Tommy didn’t even have the facilities for treating the toxic waste which ended up dumped instead.
In both instances Trafigura bought extremely cheap, low grade refinery gasoline at a profit, and turned this coker naptha as cheaply as they could through a process called caustic washing, into a petrol which wasn’t even legal to sell in the EU, in order to sell it on to Africa (where it was legal) at a further profit. The toxic waste resulting from the earlier caustic washing at sea ended up dumped in Abidjan; in the case of Sløvåg it appears to have been illegally imported, although caustic washing was done on land there as well. Trafigura knew when they tried to offload the waste which ended up in Abidjan in Amsterdam, how expensive it would be to treat the sludge legally, yet its final destination was Tommy. In Sløvåg the sludge blew up, even though Trafigura knew of the dangers of storing it for more than a few days. Deaths in Abidjan and serious health problems in Norway – Trafigura at the centre of it, making huge profits. Pierre Lorinet, the oil trading firm’s CFO said:
“We decided that our best course of action at the time was to get the [initial, super-] injunction, because we didn’t want more inaccurate reporting on things which are very clearly wrong effectively. It is a heavy-handed approach, absolutely. With hindsight, could it have been done differently? Possibly. The injunction was never intended to gag parliament or attack free speech.”
They never wanted to gag parliament or attack free speech, just wanted to stop ‘inaccurate reporting’? Given the mountain of evidence underpinning said reporting, make your own mind up, and make sure you read the Minton Report. The Basel Convention bans the export of toxic waste to developing countries – it’s no wonder Trafigura have stopped at nothing to suppress even a mention of it.
Carter-Ruck Attempt to Censor Parliament?
Following the failure of Carter-Ruck’s second ‘super injunction’ against the Guardian, which attempted to prevent them from reporting Paul Farrelly MP’s question in the House of Commons about the Minton Report, which contradicts their client Trafigura’s claims about the toxic waste dumping in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, they’ve suggested to the Speaker that even debating said super injunction is illegal:
Carter-Ruck partner Adam Tudor today sent a letter to the Speaker, John Bercow, and also circulated it to every single MP and peer, saying they believed the case was “sub judice”.
If correct, it would mean that, under Westminster rules to prevent clashes between parliament and the courts, a debate planned for next Wednesday could not go ahead.
Earlier this week, the Labour MP Paul Farrelly said Carter-Ruck might be in contempt of parliament for seeking to stop the Guardian reporting questions he had put down on the order paper revealing the existence of the “super-injunction”.
This case just gets worse and worse, but neither the speaker nor many MPs appear to agree with Carter-Ruck’s analysis:
Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP who secured next week’s debate, said: “I read with interest the letter from Carter-Ruck. I do not think that sub judice is involved here and I do not think that MPs will be deterred from discussing this case in the debate without a ruling from the Speaker, which he has not as yet indicated any likelihood of providing.”
Farrelly said: “Carter-Ruck’s manoeuvres this week, were it not so serious, would be tantamount to high farce. It is important MPs should not be prevented from going ahead with debates next week.”
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has written to Speaker Bercow, saying:
“I hope you take the view that this matter should, indeed, be debated,” he said. “The fact remains that the issue was unclear enough for an experienced QC [Queen's counsel] to advise us not to publish. There is a lack of clarity around this issue and Wednesday’s debate could serve a useful function in helping to give editors (and lawyers) guidance.”
This is a basic freedom of speech issue. We are in a situation where a national newspaper has discovered that a major multinational corporation has disposed of highly toxic waste in Ivory Coast, causing numerous injuries. Yet rather than respond to the story, Trafigura instead attacks the Guardian and other papers and broadcasters (not just in the UK) with a ‘super injunction’, preventing them from reporting on the Minton Report, which flat out contradicts their account of the story. The super injunction also bizarrely bans the reporting of the injunction itself. Then MP Paul Farrelly decides to bring the Minton Report and the super injunction up in a question in the House of Commons, but Carter-Ruck succeeds in banning reporting of his question with a second super injunction. Now after its fall, Carter-Ruck are trying to inhibit parliamentary debate of the issue.
Money (and lots of it) is subverting the right to free speech and a free press. There’s a terrible story which needs to be told here and a big cheque book shouldn’t be able to prevent it under the guise of ‘defamation’. This can’t go on. Read Jon Wessel-Aas’ fascinating article, detailing his experiences as a lawyer fighting super injuctions in Norway for some ideas on where the next step ought to lie. Is it time for the big media players to start defying this abuse of the law and reasserting the primacy of the press? If so the Tories’ threatened removal of the Human Rights Act would be an even greater catastrophe…
EDIT: Carter-Ruck and Trafigura have withdrawn the first super injunction. And the backtrack gains pace. Perhaps the Guardian and Twitter have achieved something enormous after all.
The Carter-Ruck Flashmob
Yesterday saw a small but determined flashmob form outside the London offices of libel law firm Carter-Ruck. Carter-Ruck remains at the centre of a legal and political furore over the super injunctions understood to have been used by the firm to try to prevent reporting of its client Trafigura’s involvement in this story, as well as to prevent reporting of the Minton Report (which confirms the waste was dangerous). The participants in the flashmob wore gags to reflect their anger at Carter-Ruck’s sifling of free speech for the benefit of their client, who would rather punish those who reported its wrongdoing than take responsibility, apologise and make amends.
Twitter Did Not Win It
Wikileaks, a site at the centre of the fightback against Trifigura and Carter-Ruck’s attempt to prevent the Guardian reporting on Jack Straw’s response to attempts to suppress the Minton Report in parliament, suggests Twitter didn’t end up saving free speech:
This ill-informed back-patting follows the dropping of a secret UK High Court gag order blocking the Guardian’s reporting of parliamentary questions by Paul Farrelly MP. Farrelly’s questions related to press freedoms and in particular, a leaked WikiLeaks report, the so-called “Minton report” which exposed a toxic dumping disaster inflicted on the Ivory Coast by oil trading giant Trafigura, which is reported to have hospitalized over 100,000 people.
However, a more substantive secret gag order against the report, granted in September, entirely prevents the reporting of its contents and remains in effect. It is not the only one. Last month, the Guardian revealed that it had been served with 10 secret gag orders—so-called “super-injunctions”— since January. In 2008, the paper was served with six. In 2007, five. Haven’t heard of these? Of course not, they are secret gag orders. The UK press has given up counting regular injunctions.
To understand the crucial events in this case, we need to go back to September when commodities giant Trafigura obtained the original “super injunction” preventing discussion of the leaked Minton report into the Ivory Coast disaster.
During September and the preceding months, investigative reporters from the Guardian, Norway’s NRK TV, the Independent, the BBC’s Newsnight, the Dutch press, Greenpeace and lawyers for the victims were collaborating to show Trafigura’s culpability.
It’s a blistering editorial, which everyone who cares about the freedom of the press and free speech in general should read as a priority. In essence the Guardian (amongst others) was hit with a gag order preventing reporting on the Minton Report on September 11th. Paul Farrelly MP was then understood to have intended his parliamentary question to draw attention to the order, given that libel laws are not applicable in the Houses of Parliament, so Carter-Ruck went for a second injunction in effect to shut him up too, and against all expectation succeeded. The Guardian made the second gag the national issue and drew the worldwide blogosphere in on its side, but Wikileaks believes the second injunction fell despite the massive Twitter intervention (the subject of earlier posts); with politicians amongst the targets it was inevitable. The lawsuits and gags in place before the attack on Farrelly remain untouched, and politicians are now largely disinterested in the subject. Free speech in the UK remains laughable, when it can be suppressed with a big enough chequebook, even over matters of vital public interest such as Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast.
The Minton Report can be found here.
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.
