Trafigura
Encyclopedia
Trafigura is an Amsterdam-based multinational company founded in 1993 trading in base metal
s and energy, including oil
. the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit.
It operates from 55 offices in 36 countries in Europe
and North America
, Central America
, and South America
, as well as in the Middle and Far East. It is the world's third largest private oil and metals trader after Vitol
and Glencore
.
Trafigura was set up by Claude Dauphin and Eric de Turckheim. It split off from a group of companies managed by Marc Rich
in 1993.
Trafigura has been named or involved in several scandals since its creation.
This was on May 13 and August 27, 2001. Elf-Aquitaine employees had first talked about this scheme in February 1998.
A Trafigura subsidiary called Roundhead, Inc. had bought the oil from a subsidiary of the French oil trader, Ibex Energy and claimed it paid Ibex a "premium" of 40 cents per barrel over the official United Nations
selling price. In early October 2001, the Essex was intercepted off the coast of Curaçao
before it could offload its illegal cargo. This resulted in more than US$5 million in additional shipping costs for Trafigura, and led them to sue Ibex in a London court for having misled them. But Ibex managing director Jean-Paul Cayre claimed in an affidavit that Trafigura had cooked up the scheme to "make up for an earlier loss on an Iraqi oil deal that fell through in 1999."
Amsterdam Port Services BV, the company that had been contracted to take the waste, raised their price to process the waste 20-fold soon after determining the waste was more toxic than previously understood. So, after balking at a competitor's 1000 euro per cubic metre disposal charge near Amsterdam, Trafigura decided to have the ship take back the waste and have it processed en route to different offloading sites, which all refused it until Abidjan
, Côte d'Ivoire
, one of Africa's largest seaports. According to Trafigura the waste was then handed over to a local newly formed dumping company, Compagnie Tommy, which illegally dumped the waste instead of processing it. Many people there became sick due to exposure to the waste, and investigations were begun to determine whether it was intentionally dumped by Trafigura. Trafigura stated in a press statement that their tests showed the waste not to be as toxic as had been claimed, and that they were unsure why so many people had become ill from exposure to it.
The New York Times reported on October 3, 2006 that the dumping of the waste by Compagnie Tommy was indeed illegal.
On February 13, 2007, to release its jailed executives in response to the deaths of ten people and the various illnesses of over 100,000 people attributed to the waste, Trafigura paid €152 million to Côte d'Ivoire in compensation. The payment also exonerated Trafigura from further legal proceedings in Côte d'Ivoire.
On February 19, 2007, Côte d'Ivoire attributed the deaths of five more people to the waste dump, raising the total to 15. The Guardian newspaper later wrote that "Official local autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims appeared to show fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal byproducts."
In May 2007, the Dutch
newspaper Volkskrant reported that the press officer of Trafigura, operating under the username Press Office T NL, attempted to alter the Dutch Wikipedia
article "Probo Koala" on three separate occasions, with intent to clear the company's name. The article was then temporarily locked by Wikipedia administrators so that it could not be modified.
reported that it had obtained conclusive proof that the company had released toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire. The BBC News
programme Newsnight
also reported in May that the dumping of waste in Côte d'Ivoire had led to deaths and serious health consequences. Trafigura denied this and attempted to sue the programme for libel.
In August 2009, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that Trafigura Beheer and its lawyers sued the Dutch government in order to keep a document of the Netherlands Forensics Institute (NFI) secret. This document had been given to the lawyers of the victims of Cote d'Ivoire toxic waste. Trafigura wants this decision to be reversed on the basis that the victims are not a party to the Dutch case under Dutch law, and claim it would do them irreparable damage if published. The contents of the document are, according to the newspaper, not challenged by Trafigura. The newspaper stated that the NFI determined that the contents of the tanker had been 528,000 litres of extremely alkaline waste constituting 6.8% sulfur
, for 3.5% alkyl-thiol
s and 0.5% hydrogen sulfide.
According to a September 2009 UN report, posted by Wikileaks, the dumping drove 108,000 people in the Ivory Coast to seek medical attention.
On September 4, 2009, the court decided that the prosecutor should not have given the documents to Leigh Day & Co
, the lawyers of the victims, because there was no direct relation between the environmental crime that Trafigura was a suspect of in The Netherlands and for which the samples were taken and analyzed, and the dumping in the Ivory Coast. It might be possible that the lawyers of the litigants could receive the documents, but for this a different procedure would need to be followed. The Dutch government was required to demand the return of the documents, and require that Leigh Day not make use of the documents in the civil case in the United Kingdom.
On September 16, 2009, a BBC Newsnight broadcast claimed to have uncovered evidence revealing that oil-trading company Trafigura knew that waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006 was hazardous. The Independent
published a story about the dumping of the waste on September 17, but later removed the story from their website. The story in question has been archived on Wikileaks
.
On December 12, 2009 the BBC removed its online video of Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean's report on Newsnight on 13 May, and also deleted the associated BBC News online
article. Their action was presumed to be a response to a demand by Trafigura's lawyers in their ongoing libel action. Bloggers responded by reposting the video on YouTube
and linking to it. Subsequently Wikileaks has published the defence the BBC prepared against the libel suit brought by Trafigura and Richard Wilson and Calum Carr have published the Court File containing Trafigura’s reply.
On December 17, 2009, the BBC withdrew one of the allegations it made during the May 2009 Newsnight broadcast, acknowledging that the allegation could not be proven. Later that day, the BBC broadcast an apology to Trafigura on Newsnight. The BBC however added: "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", and "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." At ALEV Alastair Mullis, of Norwich Law School, argued that the BBC paid damages as they could not substantiate the claims of the deaths: Julian Assange
, founder of WikiLeaks
, rebutted. The video of this can be found here.
and Liz Mackean from BBC Newsnight and David Leigh
from the Guardian, Synnove Bakke and Kjersti Knudsson from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, and Jeroen Trommelen from the Dutch paper de Volkskrant. The citation says the award was for reports "which exposed how a powerful offshore oil trader tried to cover up the poisoning of 30,000 West Africans". In July 2010 Trafigura was convicted in Amsterdam of illegally exporting the toxic waste to Africa and fined one million euros.
(the name of the legal firm being the only fact the Guardian were free to report in the case) from covering remarks made in Parliament. It complied with this super-injunction and neither named the questioner nor published the question. The Guido Fawkes political blog
identified the blocked question as likely to be linked to the Trafigura waste dumping case.
The Spectator
also speculated that the gagging order involved Trafigura and noted that Trafigura became a 'trending topic' on Twitter
with the story shared and distributed through numerous weblinks. The Guardian confirmed that Trafigura was the source of the gagging order, after the order was lifted the next day. The question that they were unable to report was from Paul Farrelly
, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme
:
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation have published the report in question and a copy of the gagging order against The Guardian
on their website. Comedian and author Stephen Fry
played a key role in spreading the story via his popular twitter page, describing the gagging order as "outrageous, grotesque and squalid".
Alan Rusbridger
, editor of The Guardian
described the injunction as "a fantastic own goal". According to a press release on the website of the lawyers acting for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck
, the reason that The Guardian
could not report the question asked by Paul Farrelly
was because a gagging order has been in place since 11 September 2009, before the MP asked the question. They also stated that it had never been their intention to prevent the press reporting on Parliament and that they had since agreed on changes with The Guardian to the gagging order so that they could report on the issue.
On the evening of 16 October 2009, it was reported that the injunction had been lifted and the report published.
, a Liberal Democrat
MP, secured a Westminster Hall debate on the gagging, conducted on 21 October 2009. A partner at Carter Ruck, Adam Tudor, wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons
, John Bercow
, claiming that the matter was sub judice
, but the debate did take place. During the debate, Denis MacShane
asked "do we not need to see the partners of Carter-Ruck brought before the bar of the House to apologise publicly for this attempt to suborn parliamentary democracy?" Evan Harris
drew the government's attention to the fact that although the injunction had been dropped Carter Ruck were continuing with a libel action by Trafigura against BBC Newsnight. Newsnight were being threatened by the lawyers for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck
, that they must not repeat an allegation against Carter-Ruck that deaths were caused by the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast, even though in 2007 Hansard reported the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations laid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before Parliament, and a memorandum of explanation to those regulations stated: 'The recent example of the release of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast leading to the deaths of a number of people and the hospitalisation of thousands underlines the risks involved in the movement and management of waste.' Harris asked: "how can it be that that can be in Hansard, yet there are still threats of legal action against Newsnight?" As the debate was winding up, Bridget Prentice
, the Justice Minister, said that the government were concerned about the over-use of super-injunctions. She would consider whether further guidelines needed to be issued to the judiciary, and she stressed that the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840
, which allowed the proceedings of Parliament to be reported without interference, was still in force. In the debate, Peter Bottomley
read the URL of the report in Parliament to make sure it was in the public domain. On 27 May 2010, the UK's only Green MP, Caroline Lucas
, used her maiden speech in the House of Commons to question ongoing media restrictions surrounding Trafigura.
, Sogn og Fjordane
, Norway
in a tank owned by Vest Tank, it had severe environmental and health consequences for people living nearby. In 2008 the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation published the 50 min documentary "Dirty Cargo" disclosing what had happened in the small community prior to the explosion. The company Vest Tank was trying to neutralize the same kind of chemical waste that was dumped in Côte d'Ivoire when the explosion occurred. The owner of the waste was Trafigura, on whose behalf Vest Tank was working.
Some of Trafigura's major international units include:
Base metal
In chemistry, the term base metal is used informally to refer to a metal that oxidizes or corrodes relatively easily, and reacts variably with diluted hydrochloric acid to form hydrogen. Examples include iron, nickel, lead and zinc...
s and energy, including oil
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
. the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit.
It operates from 55 offices in 36 countries in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, as well as in the Middle and Far East. It is the world's third largest private oil and metals trader after Vitol
Vitol
The Vitol group is an energy trading company founded in Rotterdam in 1966. Vitol operates worldwide and, along with Glencore and Trafigura, is one of the world's top three crude oil traders. Vitol's headquarters are located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Geneva, Switzerland...
and Glencore
Glencore
Glencore International plc is a multinational mining and commodities trading company headquartered in Baar, Switzerland and with its registered office in Saint Helier, Jersey...
.
Trafigura was set up by Claude Dauphin and Eric de Turckheim. It split off from a group of companies managed by Marc Rich
Marc Rich
Marc Rich is an international commodities trader and entrepreneur. He is best known for founding the commodities company Glencore. He was indicted in the United States on federal charges of illegally making oil deals with Iran during the late 1970s-early 1980s Iran hostage crisis and tax evasion...
in 1993.
Trafigura has been named or involved in several scandals since its creation.
Oil-for-food scandal
The company was named in the Iraq Oil-for-Food Scandal in connection with the Essex, a Liberian registered "turbine-tanker" that had UN approval to load Iraqi crude at Iraq’s main export terminal at Mina al-Bakr. The tanker was chartered by Trafigura Beheer BV and according to its captain, Theofanis Chiladakis, the Essex was at least twice 'topped off' with an extra 272,000 barrels of crude after UN monitors had signed off the cargo.This was on May 13 and August 27, 2001. Elf-Aquitaine employees had first talked about this scheme in February 1998.
A Trafigura subsidiary called Roundhead, Inc. had bought the oil from a subsidiary of the French oil trader, Ibex Energy and claimed it paid Ibex a "premium" of 40 cents per barrel over the official United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
selling price. In early October 2001, the Essex was intercepted off the coast of Curaçao
Curaçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
before it could offload its illegal cargo. This resulted in more than US$5 million in additional shipping costs for Trafigura, and led them to sue Ibex in a London court for having misled them. But Ibex managing director Jean-Paul Cayre claimed in an affidavit that Trafigura had cooked up the scheme to "make up for an earlier loss on an Iraqi oil deal that fell through in 1999."
Waste dumping in Côte d'Ivoire
On July 2, 2006, the Probo Koala, a ship leased by the company, entered a port in Amsterdam to unload several hundred tons of toxic waste.Amsterdam Port Services BV, the company that had been contracted to take the waste, raised their price to process the waste 20-fold soon after determining the waste was more toxic than previously understood. So, after balking at a competitor's 1000 euro per cubic metre disposal charge near Amsterdam, Trafigura decided to have the ship take back the waste and have it processed en route to different offloading sites, which all refused it until Abidjan
Abidjan
Abidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d'Ivoire, while the current capital is Yamoussoukro. it was the largest city in the nation and the third-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, and Kinshasa but before Montreal...
, Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
, one of Africa's largest seaports. According to Trafigura the waste was then handed over to a local newly formed dumping company, Compagnie Tommy, which illegally dumped the waste instead of processing it. Many people there became sick due to exposure to the waste, and investigations were begun to determine whether it was intentionally dumped by Trafigura. Trafigura stated in a press statement that their tests showed the waste not to be as toxic as had been claimed, and that they were unsure why so many people had become ill from exposure to it.
The New York Times reported on October 3, 2006 that the dumping of the waste by Compagnie Tommy was indeed illegal.
On February 13, 2007, to release its jailed executives in response to the deaths of ten people and the various illnesses of over 100,000 people attributed to the waste, Trafigura paid €152 million to Côte d'Ivoire in compensation. The payment also exonerated Trafigura from further legal proceedings in Côte d'Ivoire.
On February 19, 2007, Côte d'Ivoire attributed the deaths of five more people to the waste dump, raising the total to 15. The Guardian newspaper later wrote that "Official local autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims appeared to show fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste's lethal byproducts."
In May 2007, the Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
newspaper Volkskrant reported that the press officer of Trafigura, operating under the username Press Office T NL, attempted to alter the Dutch Wikipedia
Dutch Wikipedia
The Dutch Wikipedia is the Dutch-language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. As of November 2011, the Dutch Wikipedia is the fourth-largest Wikipedia edition, with over articles.-History:...
article "Probo Koala" on three separate occasions, with intent to clear the company's name. The article was then temporarily locked by Wikipedia administrators so that it could not be modified.
2009
In May 2009, the British newspaper The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
reported that it had obtained conclusive proof that the company had released toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire. The BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
programme Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
also reported in May that the dumping of waste in Côte d'Ivoire had led to deaths and serious health consequences. Trafigura denied this and attempted to sue the programme for libel.
In August 2009, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that Trafigura Beheer and its lawyers sued the Dutch government in order to keep a document of the Netherlands Forensics Institute (NFI) secret. This document had been given to the lawyers of the victims of Cote d'Ivoire toxic waste. Trafigura wants this decision to be reversed on the basis that the victims are not a party to the Dutch case under Dutch law, and claim it would do them irreparable damage if published. The contents of the document are, according to the newspaper, not challenged by Trafigura. The newspaper stated that the NFI determined that the contents of the tanker had been 528,000 litres of extremely alkaline waste constituting 6.8% sulfur
Sulfur
Sulfur or sulphur is the chemical element with atomic number 16. In the periodic table it is represented by the symbol S. It is an abundant, multivalent non-metal. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with chemical formula S8. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow...
, for 3.5% alkyl-thiol
Thiol
In organic chemistry, a thiol is an organosulfur compound that contains a carbon-bonded sulfhydryl group...
s and 0.5% hydrogen sulfide.
According to a September 2009 UN report, posted by Wikileaks, the dumping drove 108,000 people in the Ivory Coast to seek medical attention.
On September 4, 2009, the court decided that the prosecutor should not have given the documents to Leigh Day & Co
Leigh Day & Co
Leigh Day & Co is a firm of personal injury solicitors that was set up in 1987. The firm was founded by Sarah Leigh OBE and Martyn Day and now has more than 100 members of staff, including 24 partners. Following Sarah Leigh’s retirement Martyn Day became senior partner of the firm.The firm...
, the lawyers of the victims, because there was no direct relation between the environmental crime that Trafigura was a suspect of in The Netherlands and for which the samples were taken and analyzed, and the dumping in the Ivory Coast. It might be possible that the lawyers of the litigants could receive the documents, but for this a different procedure would need to be followed. The Dutch government was required to demand the return of the documents, and require that Leigh Day not make use of the documents in the civil case in the United Kingdom.
On September 16, 2009, a BBC Newsnight broadcast claimed to have uncovered evidence revealing that oil-trading company Trafigura knew that waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006 was hazardous. The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
published a story about the dumping of the waste on September 17, but later removed the story from their website. The story in question has been archived on Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
.
On December 12, 2009 the BBC removed its online video of Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean's report on Newsnight on 13 May, and also deleted the associated BBC News online
BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. The website is the most popular news website in the United Kingdom and forms a major part of BBC Online ....
article. Their action was presumed to be a response to a demand by Trafigura's lawyers in their ongoing libel action. Bloggers responded by reposting the video on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and linking to it. Subsequently Wikileaks has published the defence the BBC prepared against the libel suit brought by Trafigura and Richard Wilson and Calum Carr have published the Court File containing Trafigura’s reply.
On December 17, 2009, the BBC withdrew one of the allegations it made during the May 2009 Newsnight broadcast, acknowledging that the allegation could not be proven. Later that day, the BBC broadcast an apology to Trafigura on Newsnight. The BBC however added: "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", and "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." At ALEV Alastair Mullis, of Norwich Law School, argued that the BBC paid damages as they could not substantiate the claims of the deaths: Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
, founder of WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
, rebutted. The video of this can be found here.
2010
On April 24, 2010 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists presented the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting to the team of journalists who had revealed the Trafigura story. The award went to the British journalists Meirion JonesMeirion Jones
Meirion Jones is a British journalist working as Investigations Producer on the BBC Two Newsnight programme.In 2010 he won the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Daniel Pearl Award for his investigation of the dumping of Trafigura’s toxic waste in Africa...
and Liz Mackean from BBC Newsnight and David Leigh
David Leigh
David Leigh is a British journalist and author, currently investigations executive editor of The Guardian.-Early life:Leigh was born in 1946 and educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, receiving a research degree from Cambridge in 1968.-Career:Leigh has been a prominent...
from the Guardian, Synnove Bakke and Kjersti Knudsson from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, and Jeroen Trommelen from the Dutch paper de Volkskrant. The citation says the award was for reports "which exposed how a powerful offshore oil trader tried to cover up the poisoning of 30,000 West Africans". In July 2010 Trafigura was convicted in Amsterdam of illegally exporting the toxic waste to Africa and fined one million euros.
Super-injunction
On October 12, 2009 The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented by a legal injunction applied for by London libel lawyers Carter RuckCarter-Ruck
Carter-Ruck is a British law firm founded by Peter Carter-Ruck.According to their website they specialise in libel, privacy, international law and commercial litigation....
(the name of the legal firm being the only fact the Guardian were free to report in the case) from covering remarks made in Parliament. It complied with this super-injunction and neither named the questioner nor published the question. The Guido Fawkes political blog
Paul Staines
Paul Staines is an English-born Irish right-wing political blogger. Writer of the pseudonymous "Guido Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours & conspiracy", which had as of February 2009, 118,000 visitors per month, his political blog has been described as "one of Britain's leading political...
identified the blocked question as likely to be linked to the Trafigura waste dumping case.
The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
also speculated that the gagging order involved Trafigura and noted that Trafigura became a 'trending topic' on Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
with the story shared and distributed through numerous weblinks. The Guardian confirmed that Trafigura was the source of the gagging order, after the order was lifted the next day. The question that they were unable to report was from Paul Farrelly
Paul Farrelly
Christopher Paul Farrelly is a British Labour Party politician and journalist, who has been the Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme since 2001.-Early life:...
, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme
Newcastle-under-Lyme
Newcastle-under-Lyme is a market town in Staffordshire, England, and is the principal town of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is part of The Potteries Urban Area and North Staffordshire. In the 2001 census the town had a population of 73,944...
:
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation have published the report in question and a copy of the gagging order against The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
on their website. Comedian and author Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
played a key role in spreading the story via his popular twitter page, describing the gagging order as "outrageous, grotesque and squalid".
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...
, editor of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described the injunction as "a fantastic own goal". According to a press release on the website of the lawyers acting for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck
Carter-Ruck
Carter-Ruck is a British law firm founded by Peter Carter-Ruck.According to their website they specialise in libel, privacy, international law and commercial litigation....
, the reason that The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
could not report the question asked by Paul Farrelly
Paul Farrelly
Christopher Paul Farrelly is a British Labour Party politician and journalist, who has been the Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme since 2001.-Early life:...
was because a gagging order has been in place since 11 September 2009, before the MP asked the question. They also stated that it had never been their intention to prevent the press reporting on Parliament and that they had since agreed on changes with The Guardian to the gagging order so that they could report on the issue.
On the evening of 16 October 2009, it was reported that the injunction had been lifted and the report published.
The debate in parliament
Evan HarrisEvan Harris
Evan Leslie Harris is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon from 1997 to 2010, losing his seat in the 2010 general election by 176 votes to Conservative Nicola Blackwood....
, a Liberal Democrat
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
MP, secured a Westminster Hall debate on the gagging, conducted on 21 October 2009. A partner at Carter Ruck, Adam Tudor, wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons
Speaker of the British House of Commons
The Speaker of the House of Commons is the presiding officer of the House of Commons, the United Kingdom's lower chamber of Parliament. The current Speaker is John Bercow, who was elected on 22 June 2009, following the resignation of Michael Martin...
, John Bercow
John Bercow
John Simon Bercow is a British politician who has been the Speaker of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom since June 2009. Prior to his election to Speaker he was a member of the Conservative party....
, claiming that the matter was sub judice
Sub judice
In law, sub judice, Latin for "under judgment", means that a particular case or matter is currently under trial or being considered by a judge or court...
, but the debate did take place. During the debate, Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane
Denis MacShane is a British politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Rotherham since the 1994 by-election and served as the Minister for Europe from 2002 until 2005, as well as being a current Policy Council member for Labour Friends of Israel.On 14 October 2010, it was announced...
asked "do we not need to see the partners of Carter-Ruck brought before the bar of the House to apologise publicly for this attempt to suborn parliamentary democracy?" Evan Harris
Evan Harris
Evan Leslie Harris is a British Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon from 1997 to 2010, losing his seat in the 2010 general election by 176 votes to Conservative Nicola Blackwood....
drew the government's attention to the fact that although the injunction had been dropped Carter Ruck were continuing with a libel action by Trafigura against BBC Newsnight. Newsnight were being threatened by the lawyers for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck
Carter-Ruck
Carter-Ruck is a British law firm founded by Peter Carter-Ruck.According to their website they specialise in libel, privacy, international law and commercial litigation....
, that they must not repeat an allegation against Carter-Ruck that deaths were caused by the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast, even though in 2007 Hansard reported the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations laid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before Parliament, and a memorandum of explanation to those regulations stated: 'The recent example of the release of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast leading to the deaths of a number of people and the hospitalisation of thousands underlines the risks involved in the movement and management of waste.' Harris asked: "how can it be that that can be in Hansard, yet there are still threats of legal action against Newsnight?" As the debate was winding up, Bridget Prentice
Bridget Prentice
Bridget Theresa Prentice is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Lewisham East from 1992 to 2010, She was formerly married to fellow Labour MP Gordon Prentice, whom she married on 20 December 1975 and divorcing in 2000.- Background :Prentice was born in Glasgow,...
, the Justice Minister, said that the government were concerned about the over-use of super-injunctions. She would consider whether further guidelines needed to be issued to the judiciary, and she stressed that the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840
Parliamentary Papers Act 1840
The Parliamentary Papers Act 1840 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act was passed in response to the case of Stockdale v...
, which allowed the proceedings of Parliament to be reported without interference, was still in force. In the debate, Peter Bottomley
Peter Bottomley
Sir Peter James Bottomley is a British Conservative Party politician. He is the Member of Parliament for Worthing West...
read the URL of the report in Parliament to make sure it was in the public domain. On 27 May 2010, the UK's only Green MP, Caroline Lucas
Caroline Lucas
Caroline Patricia Lucas is a British politician. Lucas is the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, and the Green Party's first and only Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom...
, used her maiden speech in the House of Commons to question ongoing media restrictions surrounding Trafigura.
Chemical explosion in Norway
On May 24, 2007 an explosion occurred in Sløvåg GulenGulen
is a municipality in the southwestern part of Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway. It is part of the traditional district of Sogn. The administrative center of the municipality is the village of Eivindvik...
, Sogn og Fjordane
Sogn og Fjordane
is a county in Norway, bordering Møre og Romsdal, Oppland, Buskerud, and Hordaland. The county administration is in the town of Hermansverk in Leikanger municipality while the largest town is Førde....
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
in a tank owned by Vest Tank, it had severe environmental and health consequences for people living nearby. In 2008 the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation published the 50 min documentary "Dirty Cargo" disclosing what had happened in the small community prior to the explosion. The company Vest Tank was trying to neutralize the same kind of chemical waste that was dumped in Côte d'Ivoire when the explosion occurred. The owner of the waste was Trafigura, on whose behalf Vest Tank was working.
Structure
In December 2010, Trafigura bought 8% of Norilsk Nickel.Some of Trafigura's major international units include:
- Trafigura Beheer BV, based in the Netherlands. In 1999 it became the first company to obtain a contract to sell SudanSudanSudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
's oil internationally. - Trafigura AG, is the main office, based in Lucerne, Switzerland, also deals with business in the United States.
- Trafigura Pte Ltd runs the Group’s petroleum trading in the Far East.
- Puma Group of Companies which operate the Group’s worldwide oil storage and distribution assets and investments has been a wholly owned subsidiary since 2001. Puma Energy operates in over 20 countries, mainly in Central America and Africa, and supplies a network of just over 600 service stations. In November 2010 it agreed to buy BPBPBP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...
's downstream assets in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and - subject to partners' pre-emption rights - Malawi and Tanzania, which would add a further 188 retail outlets. - Galena Asset Management, based in London and FSA registered, is the subsidiary through which Trafigura has established and manages a fund management business. Lord StrathclydeThomas Galbraith, 2nd Baron StrathclydeThomas Galloway Dunlop du Roy de Blicquy Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde, PC , is a British politician. He is currently the Leader of the House of Lords and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as well as being the leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords...
, the leader of the Conservative PartyConservative Party (UK)The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
in the House of LordsHouse of LordsThe House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
, is a non-executive director on the board, although he has stated his intent to stand down from this post.
Literature
External links
- Trafigura website
- Trafigura press releases regarding the Côte d'Ivoire waste dumping incident
- NRK Brennpunkt Trafigura and the Minton report
- Leigh, David. "The Trafigura files and how to read them". The Guardian, 16 September 2009. This introduces: Internal Trafigura emails and letters regarding the Côte d'Ivoire waste dumping incident (PDF file, 7.9 MiB). The Guardian.
- Minton Report and related documents, WikileaksWikileaksWikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...