A Dutch court has fined the oil trading company Trafigura €1m (£840,000) for illegally exporting hazardous waste to west Africa. The court in Amsterdam declared the export to Ivory Coast was against the law, and also found Trafigura guilty of concealing the dangerous nature of the waste when it was initially unloaded from a ship in Amsterdam. Prosecutors had asked for a fine of €2m.
The Amsterdam district court judge Frans Bauduin also convicted a Trafigura employee for his role in the 2006 scandal, and the Ukranian captain of the Probo Koala ship that carried the waste. Thousands became ill in the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, in August 2006, but Trafigura insists the waste from the Probo Koala could not have caused serious illness.
During the trial, the prosecutor Look Bougert said the company had put "self-interest above people's health and the environment". He said Trafigura first tried to conceal how dangerous the waste was, then pumped it back on board its tanker and left the Netherlands with hundreds of tonnes of oil residue, contaminated with foul-smelling sulphur mercaptans and toxic hydrogen sulphide.
Instead of paying for specialist disposal, Trafigura "dumped it over the fence" in Abidjan. "Cheap, but with consequences," Bougert said. Trafigura's lawyer Aldo Verbruggen said the charges were based on an unfounded moral judgment. He said: "Trafigura is a company that takes responsible entrepreneurship very seriously."
Last year Trafigura was forced to withdraw in the face of a row when it attempted to enforce a super-injunction against the Guardian, gagging it from reporting proceedings in parliament.
the Guardian
