the toxic truth - Greenpeace

46 Amnesty internAtionAl And greenpeAce netherlAnds
Chapter 4
A meeting was then held on 18 August 2006
between the head of Compagnie Tommy,
Salomon Ugborogbo, Kablan from Puma,
and a WAIBS employee. 163 At the meeting
Ugborogbo gave Kablan a contract in the form
of a handwritten letter.
As can be seen from the letter (reproduced
above), the headed notepaper clearly showed
that Compagnie Tommy had only received its
licence the previous month, on 12 July 2006.
The contract states that Compagnie Tommy
will “discharge” the waste in a place called
“Akouédo”.
Akouédo is an open dumpsite for domestic
waste, located in a residential district of
Abidjan. It does not have facilities for storing
or processing hazardous waste. Arguably,
Puma, a local company, should have known
what Akouédo dump was. In any case, it
would have been very easy for either Puma
or Trafigura to check this, and, as the owner
of the waste, Trafigura had a responsibility
to undertake appropriate due diligence with
regard to the proper treatment and disposal of
the waste. 164
The contract provided for the discharge
of “MARPOL slops” at US$30 per m 3 and
“Chemical Slops” at US$35 per m 3 . This
contrasted sharply with the quote of €1,000
per m 3 quoted by APS to dispose of the waste
in the Netherlands.
On Saturday 19 August 2006, the Probo
Koala arrived at the Port of Abidjan. Trucks
and drivers hired by Compagnie Tommy were
waiting to offload the waste, and work started
the same afternoon. 165
During the offloading process at the Port of
Abidjan, one of the customs officials who was
present reported feeling ill due to the smell
from the waste. In a later court case in Côte
d’Ivoire, the customs official stated that the
smell had been so unbearable that he and his
colleagues had posted themselves upwind
to avoid breathing it in, and that he had later
sought medical treatment through his line
manager. 166
Despite this, the customs officials took no
further action to prevent the waste from
being offloaded or to raise the alert about a
potential problem with it. Customs officers
accepted the explanation offered by Salomon
Ugborogbo that the waste had been certified
by a chemist as safe. 167 However, there is no
evidence that a chemist ever looked at the
material.