Thread: How UK oil co. tried to cover up African pollution disaster

How UK oil company Trafigura tried to cover up African pollution disaster


David Leigh
guardian.co.uk
16 September 2009


• Trafigura offers payout to 31,000 victims of toxic dumping
• Secret email trail exposes truth behind £100m legal battle
• Read the emails here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/se ... files-read



Trafigura chartered the Probo Koala to take the waste to Africa. Photograph: Raigo Pajula/AFP

The British oil trader Trafigura has offered to pay out in a historic damages claim from 31,000 Africans injured by the dumping of toxic waste in one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history, the Guardian can reveal.

The compensation deal for the victims of toxic oil waste dumping in west Africa – likely to be confirmed imminently – means the full extent of attempts to cover up what really happened can be spelled out for the first time.

The truth is laid bare in Trafigura's hitherto secret documents, published by the Guardian today.

The company's internal emails show the true nature of the toxic waste dumped around Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Trafigura had publicly claimed the waste was harmless.

The exposure of the company files has contributed to Trafigura's climbdown after three years of bitterly contested legal battles. We are publishing them online today.

Martyn Day is a senior partner at the British law firm Leigh Day, which has brought one of the biggest group actions in legal history, seeking damages of £100m. He said today in Abidjan, where he has been negotiating the settlement: "The claimants are very pleased."

He was in the process of putting a global deal to the victims, he said. "The sum being discussed is based on the range of short-term symptoms claimed by our clients."

Thousands of west Africans besieged local hospitals, and a number died, in 2006 after the dumping of hundreds of tons of highly toxic oil waste around Abidjan.

Official local autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims showed fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal byproducts.

The traders have been publicly insisting for three years that their waste was routine and harmless. They claim it was "absolutely not dangerous".

They have until now denied the compensation claims, and their lawyers repeatedly threatened anyone worldwide who sought to contradict their version. They launched a libel case against BBC Newsnight, forced a "correction" from the Times, demanded the Guardian deleted articles, and yesterday tried to gag journalists in the Netherlands and Norway with legal threats.

But dozens of damning internal Trafigura emails have now come to light. They reveal how London-based company employers were told in advance that their planned chemical operation, a cheap and dirty process called "caustic washing", generated such dangerous wastes it was widely outlawed.

Claude Dauphin, the managing director, was told by the London manager, Naeem Ahmed, on 28 December 2005: "Caustic washes are banned by most countries due to the hazardous nature of the waste (mercaptans, phenols, smell) … there are not many facilities remaining in the market. There is a company in Rotterdam that burns such waste in a high stack chimney and charges are approximately $200/kg."

An email from Ahmed the previous day to the head of gasoline trading spelled out: "US/Singapore and European terminals no longer allow the use of caustic soda washes since local environmental agencies do not allow disposal of the toxic caustic after treatment."

Transport of such toxic waste across EU borders was outlawed, he told his bosses. It was illegal to dump it on any EU landfill.

The London-based traders pressed on regardless, the documents reveal. They 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 and 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.

Trafigura's libel lawyers, Carter-Ruck, recently demanded the Guardian deleted published articles, saying it was "gravely defamatory" and "untrue" to say Trafigura's waste had been dumped cheaply and could have caused deaths and serious injuries. Both the Dutch paper Volkskrant and Norwegian TV said they were yesterday also threatened with gagging actions.

Trafigura launched a libel action against BBC Newsnight, complaining Trafigura had been wrongly accused of causing deaths, disfigurement and miscarriages, and had "suffered serious damage to their reputation".

The BBC filed a fighting defence this week, accusing Trafigura of knowing its chemicals were "highly toxic, potentially lethal and posed a serious risk to public health". The BBC also alleges a cover-up, saying Trafigura's denials "lack credibility and candour".

Newsnight plans to transmit another programme on the subject on BBC2 tonight.

The UN human rights special rapporteur Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu criticised Trafigura for potentially "stifling independent reporting and public criticism" in a report the oil traders tried and failed to prevent being published in Geneva this week.

The report said Ibeanu "views with great concern reports that the company has filed or threatened to file lawsuits against various civil society and media institutions that have reported … in a critical manner".

He wrote: "According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations … there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping."

The report is written in cautious terms, but Trafigura's lobbyists, Bell Pottinger, responded by claiming to be "appalled", saying it was "premature", "inaccurate", "potentially damaging", "poorly researched", and "deeply flawed".

Yesterday Greenpeace, which has been investigating the issue, along with Amnesty, launched a legal action in Amsterdam calling for the oil firm to be prosecuted there for homicide or grievous bodily harm. It said: "This intentional pollution … has caused many people to suffer serious injuries and has even led to death."

Trafigura said it "utterly rejected" claims of a cover-up. "Every statement that has been made … has been made in good faith."

The traders said the autopsy reports were unreliable, and that hydrogen sulphide in the waste was only there in "potential" form. It has never actually been released. They said the emails contained "crude and distasteful" language, but had been taken "out of context" and should "not be taken literally".

They repeated denials that the slops could have caused death or serious injury, and were highly toxic. They denied lying about the composition of the slops.

Trafigura says it is the world's third-biggest private oil trader, and declared a $440m profit last year. Its 200 traders are reported to receive annual bonuses of up to $1m each.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/se ... vory-coast

The Trafigura files and how to read them

Internal documents give blow-by-blow account of how oil trading firm dumped toxic waste off west Africa


David Leigh
guardian.co.uk
16 September 2009


Read the Trafigura files here [PDF]:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/G ... emails.pdf

Most of these documents (PDF) are internal emails from Trafigura operatives around the world.

They give a blow-by-blow account of the oil trading firm's decision to buy gasoline from the Mexican state refinery PMI via a US oil terminal at Brownsville, and then process it at sea on a chartered tanker, the Probo Koala, using "caustic washing".

Finally, they show the traders trying to get rid of the resulting toxic waste first at the tank terminal La Skhirra in Tunisia; then at Amsterdam; then at Lagos; then the Ivory Coast; and subsequently in Norway.

The first documents are from the US and explain why the refinery is selling off cheap contaminated fuel containing very high levels of sulphur.

Subsequent Trafigura discussions are largely between the following people:

• Jorge Troop, the Trafigura trader based in the US responsible for buying up the gasoline;

• Claude Dauphin, the company president in London, in ultimate charge of all decisions;

• Leon Christophilopoulos, head of gasoline trading, based in London;

• James McNicol, a London-based trader;

• Naeem Ahmed, also London-based, who is in charge of making the arrangements for "caustic washing" and warns his colleagues that the resultant waste is highly toxic.

The executives use a lot of trader jargon. They talk about "buckets", meaning tankers, and "cubes" meaning cubic capacity. Most of the prices they quote are in US dollars. "WAF" means West Africa.

Paldiski is an oil terminal and tank farm in Estonia. Fujairah is another one in the UAE in the Gulf. La Skhirra is a tank farm on the north African coast in Tunisia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/se ... files-read

Inside Trafigura: Accusations, sour deals and friends in high places


David Leigh
guardian.co.uk
16 September 2009


Behind Trafigura is a little-known but wealthy group of London oil traders, who have high-level connections in the Conservative party. The firm's profits have ballooned over 16 years; it made $440m (now about £267m) last year on a $70bn turnover, as the world's third-biggest private oil and metals trader, outstripped only by Vitol and Glencore.

The Conservative leader in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, is on Trafigura's payroll as a director of its hedge fund, Galena Asset Management, which is based at the firm's Marble Arch office, in Portman House, Oxford Street, London.

When Trafigura faced the toxic waste controversy, Strathclyde assisted by recommending the former minister and fellow peer, Peter Fraser QC, to the embattled traders. Fraser says he is being paid to produce an independent report on the dumping affair. But he has agreed not to publish any conclusions in the near future.

The firm's holding company is in the Netherlands, there is a branch in Switzerland, and a parent, Farringford NV, offshore in Curaçao, in the Caribbean. But Trafigura's operations are essentially run from London.

Graham Sharp, a founding director, is based in Kensington. Another director, Claude Dauphin, brought up his family in Hampstead, north London. A third founding partner, Eric de Turckheim, lived until recently with his wife in Wimbledon, south London. The traders charter up to 100 tankers at sea, and control worldwide tank farms which blend fuel.

Trafigura split off in 1993 from an even more controversial group, run by Marc Rich. Rich was accused by the US of sanctions-busting to Iran and tax evasion, but was pardoned by the US president, Bill Clinton, in 2001.

Trafigura's own name has been linked not only with Ivory Coast's toxic waste, but also with worldwide accusations of bribery, smuggling or improper waste disposal.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq was under international sanctions in 2001 when Trafigura was involved in the smuggling out of the country of 500,000 barrels of oil, according to the UN Volcker report. Allegedly, a UN inspector was bribed by Iraq to turn a blind eye.

The company's Swiss arm, Trafigura AG, later pleaded guilty in the US to making false claims about the oil, sold on to US refineries. The company forfeited $20m. Trafigura still insists it handled the deal via third parties in good faith, but US authorities said: "Today's plea agreement reflects the severity of their crime."

Another deal went sour in 2006. Jamaica had been granted rights to some cheap Nigerian oil, and allowed Trafigura to sell it and keep the profits, paying only a few cents per barrel commission.

Scandal erupted when a whistleblower disclosed a secret £220,000 payment to the ruling party. Colin Campbell, general secretary of the People's National party, in Jamaica, had to resign. He said: "I made the arrangements for the funds to be paid into the campaign account, in accordance with their wish for confidentiality." Trafigura had just issued a statement denying the £220,000 was a political donation.

Bruce Golding, Jamaica's new prime minister, told parliament: "Trafigura … is believed to be guilty of having bribed public officials." Dutch investigators visited Jamaica but no action was taken. The traders lost the contract. Trafigura says it rejects "any allegations of improper conduct regarding its business activities in Jamaica".

When Trafigura's waste was dumped in Abidjan, the Ivorian government, demonstrating a short way with western entrepreneurs, locked up without charge Trafigura executives for five months until the firm agreed, without admitting liability, to pay $200m for a clean-up. In Norway, Trafigura persuaded Vest Tank, which owned a tank farm on a fjord, to handle more of the waste. A tank blew up in 2007, showering residents with noxious smells. An inquiry found attempts to treat the waste had overheated a carbon filter. Vest Tank currently faces prosecution.

Asked about this history, Bell Pottinger, the firm founded by Tim Bell, and which acts as Trafigura's spin doctors, told us: "Trafigura has always done its business in an ethical and transparent manner."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/se ... servatives

Call for murder charges to be brought over toxic dumping

Petition filed in Dutch court claims Trafigura knew waste that maimed thousands in Ivory Coast was hazardous


By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter
The Independent
18 September 2009


Trafigura, the oil-trading company at the centre of the scandal caused by the dumping of tons of toxic waste in one of the world's poorest countries, could be prosecuted for murder after a dossier of evidence was submitted to a court in the Netherlands yesterday, alleging that the sludge caused deaths and serious injuries.

A complaint filed by Greenpeace Netherlands calls for a Dutch prosecution arising from Trafigura's actions in July 2006 – when a chartered tanker carrying the contaminated waste arrived in Amsterdam – to be widened to include events in Ivory Coast a month later which caused thousands of people to fall ill after tons of the foul-smelling slurry was dumped in the port of Abidjan.

The campaigning group wants Dutch courts to order public prosecutors to bring charges of murder, manslaughter, negligence and conspiracy against the London-based commodities giant, which has vigorously denied any knowledge of the fly-tipping of the waste by an Ivorian sub-contractor in August 2006.

Emails between Trafigura employees submitted to the court in The Hague are claimed by Greenpeace to show that the company knew the waste – described in one internal memo as "the shit" – was potentially hazardous and could not be exported outside the European Union. Trafigura insists that its managers sought at all times to dispose lawfully of the "slops" on board its chartered tanker, the Probo Koala.

Trafigura, which last year had a turnover of $73bn (£44bn, equivalent to twice the GDP of Ivory Coast), has agreed to a multimillion-pound payout to settle Britain's largest group lawsuit, brought by 30,000 Abidjan residents who fell ill after breathing in fumes from the sludge.

The settlement of the High Court case, expected to be finalised within weeks, concerns claims by victims who suffered short-term illnesses. But it does not apply to allegations, which will now not be tested in the British courts, that the dumped waste caused more serious problems, including deaths, miscarriages and birth defects.

Trafigura has fought a three-year battle, engaging PR consultants and libel lawyers to dispute critical reporting of the incident, and insists that the waste could not have caused the serious injuries alleged. A United Nations report this week stated that there seemed to be "prima facie evidence" that up to a dozen deaths in Abidjan were linked to the sludge.

The oil trader, the third-largest of its kind in the world, is already being prosecuted in the Netherlands over claims that it breached Dutch and European laws by misdeclaring the nature of the sludge on the Probo Koala when it arrived in Amsterdam, and by subsequently taking the waste outside EU borders. A Greenpeace spokesman said: "The emails show that Trafigura employees knew the waste would be difficult to deal with and were desperate to find someone who would take it off their hands.

"There are now no legal proceedings which will test the claims that as well as making thousands of people in Ivory Coast sick, the waste was also responsible for deaths and other serious injuries of innocent people. We are asking the Dutch courts to change that."

The contaminated sludge – its composition is disputed by Trafigura and opponents – was the by-product of deals struck by the company's traders in 2005 and 2006 to buy a cheap and dirty oil known as "coker naptha" from a Mexican refinery and extract clean fuel from it by adding a mixture of caustic soda and a catalyst. Emails show Trafigura expected to make a profit of $7m (£4m) from each cargo, despite the fact that "caustic washes are banned in most countries due to the hazardous nature of the waste". This do-it-yourself process was performed in or about April 2006 on board the Probo Koala while it was anchored off Gibraltar. The resulting waste arrived in Abidjan on 19 August 2006 and was unloaded from the tanker into trucks hired by Compagnie Tommy, the sub-contractor employed by Trafigura's shipping agent.

It was then dumped at 18 sites, including drains and lagoons, around the sprawling city, leading to a flood of victims complaining of symptoms including sickness, diarrhoea and breathing difficulties. Autopsy reports included in the Greenpeace dossier suggest that the bodies of 12 people who died in Abidjan showed high levels of hydrogen sulphide, a poisonous gas which campaigners claim was present in the waste. Trafigura insists the gas could not have been emitted by the sludge.

In a statement, the company accused Greenpeace of a "wholly selective interpretation" of a small number of emails containing "trader-speak" which could not be taken literally. It added: "More importantly, on a proper analysis of all the material and of what in fact happened, it is clear that the responsible individuals at Trafigura sought at all times to ensure that the slops were disposed of lawfully.

"Greenpeace Netherlands' unfounded accusations are utterly rejected by Trafigura. It is deeply regrettable that Greenpeace has chosen to make a number of serious and unfounded remarks, without any regard to the available scientific evidence or to statements made by Trafigura based on detailed analysis by independent experts."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 89421.html

Trafigura's attempts to gag the media prove that libel laws should be repealed

Defamation laws which Trafigura tried to use must no longer be allowed to hide corporate malpractice or stifle criticism


George Monbiot
17 September 2009
guardian.co.uk


If you are not convinced that Britain's libel laws operate against the public interest, check out the Trafigura case. Thousands of west Africans fell ill and an unknown number died in 2006 after hundreds of tonnes of the oil company's toxic oil waste were dumped in densely populated parts of Ivory Coast.

Now that the Guardian has found the smoking gun — the cynical and disgraceful emails from Trafigura traders discussing the creation and disposal of dangerous wastes – the company's attempts to stifle its critics have collapsed. But until now the coverage of the case in Britain, with a few honourable exceptions such as Newsnight and the Guardian's investigations team, has been curiously muted. This could be one of the worst cases of corporate killing and injury since the Bhopal disaster, but much of the media wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

The reason isn't hard to divine: Trafigura has been throwing legal threats (pdf) around like confetti. It's true that the company has also threatened journalists in the Netherlands and Norway, but the law is less kind to such plaintiffs in those countries, and its threats were taken less seriously.

In Britain, libel (or defamation) is used as the rich man's sedition law, stifling criticism and exposure of all kinds of malpractice. Dating back to the 13th century, it was reframed during the past 200 years specifically to protect wealthy people from criticism, based on the presumption that any derogatory remark made about a gentleman must be false. The law of defamation is the only British instrument which places the burden of proof on the defendant. Given the inordinate costs involved, it's not surprising that it discourages people from investigating abuses of power.

How many Trafiguras have got away with it by frightening critics away with Britain's libel laws? How many Robert Maxwells have successfully fended off attempts to show that they have robbed, cheated and lied? These iniquitous, outdated laws are a threat to democracy, a threat to society, a threat to the environment and public health. They must be repealed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/g ... libel-laws