the toxic truth - Greenpeace

the toxic truth
directly pertains to waste produced through
processes related to petroleum – its core
business.
The choice of Tommy
Having decided to offload waste in Abidjan that
it knew was dangerous, and which should not
have left Europe, far from taking all possible
steps to ensure its safe disposal, Trafigura
contracted a newly licensed company to deal
with it. The circumstances surrounding the
decision to contract Compagnie Tommy are
highly questionable. As described in Chapter
4, a more experienced company was known to
Trafigura: Ivoirienne des Techniques d’energie
(ITE). But on 17 August 2006, Trafigura’s
subsidiary, Puma, was apparently unwilling
to wait a matter of 30 minutes to talk to ITE.
Instead, Tommy was contracted within a matter
of 24 hours.
No explanation has been provided as to
why Trafigura opted for an unproven, newly
licensed company to dispose of waste that it
was, by this time, well aware was dangerous
and needed proper treatment and disposal.
When Trafigura’s Chairman, Claude Dauphin,
was asked about the choice of Tommy during
his police interview in Abidjan, he was not able
to give an answer:
“ Question to the accused:
Why did you take the risk of finding a company
in two days to treat these products in Abidjan
when no information was available about the
prices charged in this locality and when the
Amsterdam contract with APS had been ended
for reasons to do with price?
Reply:
I have asked myself the same question. ” 381
The handwritten letter supplied by Compagnie
Tommy, which constitutes the contract
with Trafigura, should, on its own, have
raised questions about the capacity and
experience of the company. First, Tommy’s
Diomande Adama, former employee of Hotel Sofitel in Paris,
who exposed how Trafigura paid for the General Manager
and others of the Port of Abidjan to stay at the hotel in May
2006. © Greenpeace/pieter Boer
trafigura’s relationship
with the port of abidjan
According to Trafigura, the company and its subsidiaries
are major investors in Abidjan and the port. Documents
obtained by Greenpeace in 2010 reveal that the General
Manager of the port had stayed in Paris in a luxury hotel
at the expense of Trafigura at the end of May 2006, just a
few months before the waste was dumped in Abidjan and
before the port authorities approved a crucial extension
of Compagnie Tommy’s licence on 9 August. 378 The hotel
invoices were passed to Greenpeace by an Ivorian exemployee
of Hotel Sofitel in Paris who stated that he had
quit his job in 2010 in order to release the information. In
early 2011, Greenpeace asked Trafigura to comment on
the company’s relationship with the General Manager of
the port. 379 Trafigura did not to respond to the information
presented, 380 but has publicly stated that the allegation
of impropriety is “absurd” and that, given its relationship
with the port, “it is inevitable that there are business
meetings with the relevant authorities.”
The company has also stated on its website that if
“Trafigura had been planning in May to discharge the
slops in Abidjan then why would the company have gone
to the substantial cost and effort of sending the Probo
Koala into Amsterdam in July?”
It is not clear how “substantial” the costs involved were
in sending the Probo Koala to Amsterdam, given it was en
route to nearby Estonia. Amnesty International and Greenpeace
have asked Trafigura to comment on the reason for
the Paris meeting, and to disclose any payments made
directly to, or as expenses for, public officials in Abidjan.
The company did not respond.
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Chapter 7