Trafigura: the ugly abuse of corporate power
September 17th, 2009There are several lessons to be drawn from the exposure, after 3 years of evasion and intimidation, of the systematic cover-up of one of the biggest toxic oil-dumping scandals for decades. Trafigura, the world’s third-biggest private oil trader, bought up hundreds of tonnes of lethal sulphur-contaminated Mexican gasoline and dumped it on wasteland around Abidjan, the capital of Cote d’Ivoire in west Africa, which caused according to official estimates 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and 108,000 medical consultations by those affected. Leaked internal emails show that the traders were told in advance that the chemical process of ‘caustic washing’ which they used created such dangerous wastes that it was banned in the West. But they went ahead, dumping it without any warning in a third world country, because as the emails revealed they expected to make profits of $7m a time from buying up the contaminated gasoline ‘bloody cheap’. This awful saga shows the drastic hole in regulations that exists and makes clear the reforms now urgently needed.
First, there has long been need of an International Environmental Protection Agency vested with the power to prosecute companies and individuals who cause extensive or dangerous degradation of the environment. UNEP (the UN Environmental Programme) has a monitoring, negotiating and advisory role, but is not currently equipped with the powers, expertise or resources to undertake this prosecutory role.
Secondly, multinational corporations should be held responsible for their actions abroad, or the actions overseas by any of their subsidiaries, in the courts of their metropolitan country. Trafigura is a British-registered company and therefore should be liable for prosecution in the UK courts for criminal environmental degradation anywhere oversea, in Abidjan or anywhere else. Because transnational corporations are powerful and wealthy (Trafigura declared profits of $440m last year), prosecution should be publicly funded. Such prosecutions could be carried out by public authorities (the equivalent of the Serious Fraud Office for dealing internationally with serious social and environmental despoliation), private law firms (such as Leigh Day who are currently taking out an action on behalf of the African victims of Trafigura’s dumping), or NGOs (such as Greenpeace which has launched a legal action calling for the prosecution of Trafigura for homicide). However, without the backdrop of public funding there can be no guarantee that in future there will be the necessary resources and legal muscle to take on some of the most egregious examples of unscrupulous corporate power.
Third, it is highly disturbing that Trafigura got away with it for so long because they wre protected by the threats and intimidation of their lawyers (Carter Ruck) and the relentless campaigning of their lobbyists (Bell Pottinger). The law needs to be changed so that the professional accessories of those found guilty of serious corporate misdemeanours are themselves liable where they have made allegations on behalf of their clients which they have reason to believe are untrue or grossly misleading. Lawyers and lobbyists should not be protected from redress where they have systematically and knowingly perverted the course of justice with serious adverse consequences for the public interest or the fundamental human rights of others.
September 20th, 2009 at 9:32 am
You propose sanctions. Quite right. But confidence in such an idea oozes away if we draw parallels between what you suggest for poisoned-oil spillers and what might be done to nuclear polluters.
In the UK our own Environment Agency is completely in cahoots with the Health Protection Agency, having no expertise to test whether HPA’s advice conforms with “sound science” (EA is legally bound to ensure that they use sound science). And when the EA’s noses are rubbed in elementary mistakes the HPA has made they say We regard ourselves as an intelligent client and we’re satisfied with HPA”.
UNEP’s investigations into contamination from Uranium-based weapons in the Balkans and the Lebanon have been a sick joke – wrong methods, wrong equipment, wrong assumptions.
So if those are any kind of precedent I wonder why we should think an International Environment Agency would serve the interests of truth any better. Presumably it would operate under the UN banner. In that case would it be like the UN’s World Health Organisation? Since 1959 WHO has been subject to an agreement with the UN’s pro-nuclear International Atomic Energy Agency which gives IAEA power to stop WHO looking into radiation and health. (IAEA don’t actually need to exercise this veto because, like all UN agencies, the culture of WHO is thoroughly pro-nuclear.)
The International label is no guarantee of probity or effectiveness. After all, the source of the HPA’s radiological advice is the International Commission on Radiological Protection who, in defending their flawed risk model, have never admitted any evidence of health effects after Chernobyl, thus robbing the human race of the best and greatest chance it has ever had to examine the consequences of exposing populations to radioactive pollution. They never cite any evidence they don’t agree with.
We can look at one example of this global nuclear mindset in action. It’s parochial but precedent setting. HPA have recently been in Northamptonshire, acting as paid consultants to Augean – operators who are applying for Environment Agency authorisation to dump radioactive waste in a poorly engineered landfill where no off-site monitoring is planned. The EA has been down there too, I hear, echoing HPA’s reassuring twaddle about doses to the public being so low that they have nothing to worry about. All based on an out-of-date risk model whose credibility was blown apart by the conclusions of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters, which you set up and which reported in 2004 that the concept of “dose” is meaningless for the kinds of exposure routinely foisted on us by the nuclear industry and the military.
I said this Augean application was precedent setting. The rush is on to get rid of wastes from decommissioning old nuclear sites so as to make way for new nuclear build. Augean will hope to benefit from the fact that HPA mishandled its own consultation on radiological criteria for on-land disposals; HPA was given strong evidence of the effects of Uranium but threw it out and closed down the dialogue.
Phew! Fortunately, as you point out, the Courts may come to our aid. The grief is already being felt in the US, where an oil company which contaminated land with radioactivity from old pipe-work has had to pay $870 million to a single landowner. Oil workers who were exposed while scrapping the pipes and subsequently got cancer and leukaemia have won a string of multi-million dollar settlements. Sulphur is not the only nasty in oil.
And in the UK a few days ago, a Court found Uranium weapons used by Britain and the US in the 1991 Gulf War guilty of causing the death of Lance Corporal Stuart Dyson. Cases like these are being decided on the invalidity of the ICRP risk model.
All are agreed that polluters like Augean will be liable. The vast asbestos bankruptcies of the last few years will look like a vicarage tea-party. Personal injury lawyers, start queuing here, please. I hope you will begin by obtaining justice for Stuart Dyson’s family; they saw a healthy young man fade away for 18 years after his service in the Gulf and die at the age of 39.