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Amnesty international and greenpeace netherlands
key facts of the case
counts against Trafigura Beheer BV, a Londonbased executive of Trafigura Ltd. and the captain of the Probo Koala. The guilty verdict against Trafigura Beheer BV was upheld by the Dutch Court of Appeal in December 2011. The role played by Trafigura in relation to the dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan has never been subject to a full court proceeding. A large portion of the settlement amount paid to the state of Côte d’Ivoire was supposed to be allocated as compensation to the victims and for clean-up. As of July 2012, clean-up was reported to be complete, but questions remain about the adequacy of the process in some of the affected areas. The status of the compensation fund is unclear, but thousands of people whose health was affected could not access the government compensation scheme. In 2006, some 30,000 of the victims of the dumping filed a civil case against Trafigura in the United Kingdom (UK). On 23 September 2009, the High Court of England and Wales approved a UK£30 million (US$45 million) settlement between the parties. However, during the process of distributing this money to the victims in Abidjan, an organization known as the National Coordination of Toxic Waste Victims of Côte d’Ivoire (CNVDT-CI), falsely claiming to represent the claimants in the UK case, gained control of part of the money and approximately 6,000 victims did not receive their compensation. Côte d’Ivoire was plunged into political turmoil following the November 2010 elections, which led to a political stalemate and to serious human rights violations committed both by security forces loyal to the outgoing President Laurent Gbagbo and those loyal to Alassane Ouattara. All the country’s state institutions virtually stopped functioning during that time. The new president, Alassane Ouattara, was sworn in on 21 May 2011. Since then, state institutions have started functioning again.
An investigation into the misappropriation of the UK compensation money was opened in 2011, and in May 2012, Côte d’Ivoire’s Minister of African Integration, Adama Bictogo, was removed from his post by the President because of his alleged role in the fraud. The investigation was ongoing at the time of writing. Despite some action by the states involved to investigate and sanction those who were involved in the dumping of the toxic waste, the victims have not seen justice done. The central actor – Trafigura – has evaded all but a limited Dutch prosection and the UK civil action. The truth about what happened has never fully come to light. Adequate compensation has not reached all of the victims. The circumstances that allowed more than 100,000 people to experience the horror of getting sick from an unknown toxic waste dumped where they live and work continue to exist.