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the toxic truth
chapter 11
In an interview conducted shortly after the settlement, one of the Trafigura Group’s executives, Eric de Turckheim, stated that the decision of the court to allow the executives to be released on bail was independent of the settlement. When asked by a journalist whether the settlement money paid by Trafigura to the state could be interpreted as “ransom money”, he said:
That would be totally false. It just so “ “ happens that we reached an agreement with the government of Abidjan a few hours before the Court of Appeal made a decision about the detention of our two managers. But the two 608 events are independent.
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This statement made by the company, denying that a link existed between the release of the three executives and the settlement agreement, is not credible in light of the settlement’s provisions. Money was provided as surety and bail. In addition, a “Note” to the settlement explicitly stated that, among the “necessary documents” that had to be presented to the bank before the money would be released, was a statement from a court official certifying the actual release of the executives, their boarding of an airliner and the take-off of the said airliner, all in the presence of a bank representative. This same condition was also included in the bank credit letter issued by the Côte d’Ivoire International
Bank for Commerce and Industry, under which it was stated that the money would only be paid to the Ivorian government upon presentation of the document confirming that the Trafigura executives had been released.609 Public statements by the Ivorian prosecutor after the settlement expose the heavy degree of involvement of the then President, Laurent Gbagbo, in securing the release of the executives. The acting Public Prosecutor told a journalist that, in view of Trafigura’s “effort [to] compensate victims before the trial” for such a significant sum, the President of Côte d’Ivoire was entitled to say to him as prosecutor: “Listen, I think that on this point of compensation, the representatives of the company Trafigura have made a significant gesture. I also need to make an appreciable gesture which is the provisional release on bail of those charged,” and to ask him as the prosecutor to take that on board.610 The Public Prosecutor stated that the authorities had received assurances that Dauphin and Valentini would appear in court for the criminal proceedings, since Trafigura had business interests in Côte d’Ivoire. In reality, neither Dauphin nor Valentini returned to Côte d’Ivoire, and the criminal proceedings continued against the other parties in their absence.