The Guardian has evidence of a massive cover-up by British oil trader Trafigura, in one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history.
Internal e-mails show that Trafigura, which yesterday suddenly announced an offer to pay compensation to 31,000 west African victims, was fully aware that its waste dumped in Ivory Coast was so toxic that it was banned in Europe.
Thousands of west Africans besieged local hospitals in 2006, and a number died, after the dumping of hundreds of tonnes of highly toxic oil waste around the country’s capital, Abidjan. 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.
Trafigura has insisted publicly for three years that its waste was routine and harmless.
It claims it was “absolutely not dangerous.”
It has until now denied compensation claims, and its lawyers repeatedly threatened anyone worldwide who sought to contradict its version. It launched a libel case against BBC Newsnight, forced an alleged correction from the London Times, demanded the Guardian delete articles, and on Wednesday tried to gag journalists in the Netherlands and Norway with legal threats.
But the dozens of damning internal Trafigura e-mails that 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 waste that it was widely outlawed in the west.
The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of US$7 million 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 March 10, 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. The Dutch paper Volkskrant and Norwegian TV said they were also threatened with gagging actions on Wednesday.
Trafigura also launched a libel action against the BBC’s Newsnight, complaining it had been wrongly accused of causing deaths, disfigurement and miscarriages, and had “suffered serious damage to their reputation.”
The BBC filed a fighting defense this week, accusing Trafigura of knowing its chemicals were “highly toxic, potentially lethal and posed a serious risk to public health.”
The broadcaster also alleged a cover-up, saying Trafigura’s denials “lack credibility and candour.”
Newsnight planned to transmit another program on the subject on BBC TV yesterday. UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur professor Okechukwu Ibeanu criticized Trafigura for potentially “stifling independent reporting and public criticism” in a report the oil trader tried and failed to prevent being published in Geneva this week.
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