The British oil trading giant, Trafigura – the world’s third largest trader – has agreed to pay an unprecedented multimillion-pound payout to reach a “global settlement” against 31,000 Africans.
They fell ill from tonnes of toxic waste dumped illegally in what has become one of the most famous cases of pollution incidents in recent decades.
The legal claim has gone on for three years and is Britain’s largest ever class action lawsuit after highly contaminated stinking sludge from Trafigura’s ship was covertly dumped at night in landfills around Abidjan.
The incident caused at least 100,000 residents to seek hospital treatment, complaining of breathing difficulties and sickness. A number also died, with official autopsy reports on 12 alleged victims appearing to show fatal levels of the poisonous gas hydrogen sulphide, one of the waste’s lethal byproducts.
For the last three years, Trafigura has insisted the slurry was dumped without its knowledge and could not have caused serious injury or illness. Trafigura’s libel lawyers, Carter-Ruck, have been ruthless in demanding stories be deleted including from the Guardian, the Dutch paper Volkskrant, Norwegian TV and the BBC’s Newsnight.
According to Guardian: “The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of $7m a time by buying up what they called ‘bloody cheap’ cargoes of sulphur-contaminated Mexican gasoline. They decided to try to process the fuel on board a tanker anchored offshore, creating toxic waste they called ‘slops’.
– from priceofoil.org