Trafigura Gag Lifted

So, like other journalists in the UK, I was effectively hamstrung by Trafigura and Carter-Ruck's injunction against reporting the publication of the Minton Report and questions being asked in the UK House of Commons. Trafigura is the company linked the toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast in August 2006 which resulted in the deaths of at least 15 people and thousands of others becoming sick.

Still, the outcry in the UK was not over the toxic dumping, but that a UK law firm was reported to have attempted to gag the reporting of Parliament by the Guardian newspaper (and by extension any other media outlet) -- something it was not legally allowed to do. The Twitterverse came to the rescue, and links to the Minton report, as leaked on the Wikileaks web site, were everywhere.

That of course would normally have sounded the death knell for the gag, but Carter-Ruck had one last card to play, claiming that the whole mess was sub-judice, and that under Parliament's rules it could therefore not be discussed in debate. The law firms letter to the Right Honourable John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons states:

"Clearly, the question of whether this matter is sub judice is entirely a matter for your discression, although we would observe that we believe the proceedings to have been and to remain "active" within the definition of House Resolution CJ (2001-02) 194-195 of 15 November 2001 in that arrangements have been made for the hearing of an application before the Court."

Why all the outcry over the Minton Report (which is now up on the Guardian's website), which basically is an analysis of what was dumped in the Ivory Coast, not who dumped it? Basically its one small part of a paper chain linking it to Trafigura Beheer BV (since it was they who commissioned it). On Thursday, 15 October, Greenpeace announced that it was in possession of further evidence which linked Trafigura to the dumping -- internal emails and other documents which apparently show Trafigura's executives "were aware the sludge that the ship Probo Koala brought to Ivory Coast was hazardous" (see report in the Huffington Post, New Evidence Links Oil Company To Toxic Waste Dumping In The Ivory Coast?.

Trafigura has already paid the Ivorian government £100m ($154.6m) to remove the waste (February 2007) and agreed a settlement to the people harmed by the toxic dumping -- £1,000 ($1,546) per person to each of the 30,000 people believed to have fallen ill -- in September 2009.