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Hi – I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts but as I see it there are a few issues with the intro:
A possible redraft could be...
...referencing these three (not David Leigh btw – that's ended up at the bottom of this page from a post by Alcea setosa in 2011):
Thanks. HOgilvy ( talk) 22:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi,
This article currently lacks important information about Trafigura's history, business activities and company structure. This was touched on as an issue by Petrolmaps further up this talk page in 2010, in a thread that also involved Eraserhead1 and SmartSE. Let me declare straight away that I work for Bell Pottinger, a London-based PR firm, and that Trafigura is my client – please see my user page for more info. I will register my COI on COIN shortly. I notice that there have been large non-consensus edits by two IPs recently that have been speedily reverted. Let me be clear that I intend to work with the community to update and improve this article by seeking consensus on neutral, accurate content that is presently missing. I understand that – as has been mentioned on this page – such information hasn't always been easy to find, but there are in fact a good number of credible secondary sources on this company and its activities that I think warrant some attention.
First of all, please see a proposed Company History section in this user space here. This is fully referenced using the appropriate citation templates and is ready for review. Please feel free to leave feedback here, on COIN, on my talk page or on the talk page of the user space. Many thanks. HOgilvy ( talk) 20:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I took a look at and incorporated my own version of the "Activities" section. I think using an annual report-type document is appropriate for issues of corporate structure and for a comprehensive, up-to-date account of the company's primary activities that (for a B2B company) are often not reported in the media (or outdated when reported), however the material had far too much weight for use of a primary source, especially when it comes to details about contract terms, which is information best suited for Trafigura customers, as oppose to the public (our target audience). Some of the information I trimmed might be better suited for the Corporate structure section. CorporateM ( Talk) 14:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
It took me a while to realize that various sections of the article were all referring to the same controversial toxic waste dump in Côte d'Ivoire, which has its own article at 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump. I have used the Lede of the sub-article instead following WP:SUMMARY, but am keeping the more extended content in storage here so I (or someone else) can cull through it and perhaps recover some of the content for this article's summary or to enhance the main article on the spill. CorporateM ( Talk) 13:50, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
storage
|
---|
Toxic waste in Côte d'IvoireIn May 2009, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that it had obtained conclusive proof that Trafigura had released toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire. [1] The BBC News programme Newsnight also reported in May that the dumping of waste in Côte d'Ivoire had led to deaths and serious health consequences. Trafigura denied this and attempted to sue the programme for libel. [2] In August 2009, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that Trafigura Beheer and its lawyers sued the Dutch government in order to keep a document of the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) secret. This document had been given to the lawyers of the victims of Cote d'Ivoire toxic waste. Trafigura wants this decision to be reversed on the basis that the victims are not a party to the Dutch case under Dutch law, and claim it would do them irreparable damage if published. The contents of the document are, according to the newspaper, not challenged by Trafigura. The newspaper stated that the NFI determined that the contents of the tanker had been 528,000 litres of extremely alkaline waste constituting 6.8% sulfur, for 3.5% alkyl- thiols and 0.5% hydrogen sulfide. [3] According to a September 2009 UN report, posted by Wikileaks, [4] the dumping drove 108,000 people to seek medical attention. On September 4, 2009, the court decided that the prosecutor should not have given the documents to Leigh Day & Co, the lawyers of the victims, because there was no direct relation between the environmental crime that Trafigura was a suspect of in The Netherlands and for which the samples were taken and analyzed, and the dumping in Côte d’Ivoire. It might be possible that the lawyers of the litigants could receive the documents, but for this a different procedure would need to be followed. The Dutch government was required to demand the return of the documents, and require that Leigh Day not make use of the documents in the civil case in the United Kingdom. [5] On September 16, 2009, a BBC Newsnight broadcast claimed to have uncovered evidence revealing that oil-trading company Trafigura knew that waste dumped in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006 was hazardous. [6] The Independent published a story about the dumping of the waste on September 17, but later removed the story from their website. The story in question has been archived on Wikileaks. [7] On December 12, 2009 the BBC removed its online video of Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean's report on Newsnight on 13 May, and also deleted the associated BBC News online article. Their action was presumed to be a response to a demand by Trafigura's lawyers in their ongoing libel action. Bloggers responded by reposting the video on YouTube and linking to it. [8] Subsequently Wikileaks has published the defence the BBC prepared against the libel suit brought by Trafigura [9] and Richard Wilson and Calum Carr have published the Court File containing Trafigura’s reply. [10] [11] On December 17, 2009, the BBC withdrew one of the allegations it made during the May 2009 Newsnight broadcast, acknowledging that the allegation could not be proven. [12] Later that day, the BBC broadcast an apology to Trafigura on Newsnight. [13] The BBC however added: "The BBC has played a leading role in bringing to the public's attention the actions of Trafigura in the illegal dumping of 500 tons of hazardous waste", and "The dumping caused a public health emergency with tens of thousands of people seeking treatment." Trafigura had only brought the libel action against a single aspect of Newsnight's reporting, the BBC statement went on: "Experts in the [compensation] case were not able to establish a link between the waste and serious long-term consequences, including deaths." [14] At ALEV Alastair Mullis, of Norwich Law School, argued that the BBC paid damages as they could not substantiate the claims of the deaths: Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, rebutted. The video of this can be found here. [15] In July 2010 Trafigura was convicted in Amsterdam of illegally exporting the toxic waste to Africa and fined one million euros. [16] Super-injunctionOn October 12, 2009 The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented by a legal injunction applied for by London libel lawyers Carter Ruck (the name of the legal firm being the only fact the Guardian were free to report in the case) from covering remarks made in Parliament. It complied with this super-injunction and neither named the questioner nor published the question. [17] The Spectator also speculated that the gagging order involved Trafigura and noted that Trafigura became a trending topic on Twitter with the story shared and distributed through numerous weblinks. [18] [19] The Guardian confirmed that Trafigura was the source of the gagging order, after the order was lifted the next day. [20] The question that they were unable to report was from Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme:
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation have published the report in question and a copy of the gagging order against The Guardian on their website. [22] [23] Comedian and author Stephen Fry played a key role in spreading the story via his popular Twitter page, describing the gagging order as "outrageous, grotesque and squalid". [24] Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian described the injunction as "a fantastic own goal". [25] According to a press release on the website of the lawyers acting for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, the reason that The Guardian could not report the question asked by Paul Farrelly was because a gagging order has been in place since 11 September 2009, before the MP asked the question. They also stated that it had never been their intention to prevent the press reporting on Parliament and that they had since agreed on changes with The Guardian to the gagging order so that they could report on the issue. [26] On the evening of 16 October 2009, it was reported that the injunction had been lifted and the report published. [27] The debate in parliamentEvan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, secured a Westminster Hall debate on the gagging, conducted on 21 October 2009. A partner at Carter Ruck, Adam Tudor, wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, claiming that the matter was sub judice, but the debate did take place. [28] During the debate, Denis MacShane asked "do we not need to see the partners of Carter-Ruck brought before the bar of the House to apologise publicly for this attempt to suborn parliamentary democracy?" Evan Harris drew the government's attention to the fact that although the injunction had been dropped, Carter-Ruck were continuing with a libel action by Trafigura against the BBC's Newsnight programme. Carter-Ruck told Newsnight that they must not repeat an allegation that deaths were caused by the dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire, even though Hansard, in 2007, reported the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations laid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before Parliament and a memorandum of explanation to those regulations stated: "The recent example of the release of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire leading to the deaths of a number of people and the hospitalisation of thousands underlines the risks involved in the movement and management of waste.'" Harris asked: "[H]ow can it be that that can be in Hansard, yet there are still threats of legal action against Newsnight?" As the debate was winding up, Bridget Prentice, the Justice Minister, said that the government were concerned about the over-use of super-injunctions. She would consider whether further guidelines needed to be issued to the judiciary, and she stressed that the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, which allowed the proceedings of Parliament to be reported without interference, was still in force. In the debate, Peter Bottomley read the URL of the report in Parliament to make sure it was in the public domain. [29] On 27 May 2010, the UK's only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, used her maiden speech in the House of Commons to question ongoing media restrictions surrounding Trafigura. [30] 2012In September 2012, Amnesty International and Greenpeace Netherlands published the results of a 3-year investigation into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump, in a report entitled "The Toxic Truth". [31] The report accused Trafigura of a series of failings, describing the toxic waste dumping as "a story of corporate crime, human rights abuse and governments’ failure to protect people and the environment". Amnesty International and Greenpeace called for the company to be prosecuted in the UK over the incident. The report included a formal response from Trafigura, in which the company contested the report's findings, arguing that it contained "significant inaccuracies and misrepresentations". According to Amnesty International and Greenpeace "Trafigura did not name any specific inaccuracies or misrepresentations". On 16 November 2012 Trafigura and the Dutch authorities agreed to a settlement. The settlement obliges Trafigura to pay the existing 1 million euro fine and in addition the company must also pay Dutch authorities a further 300,000 euros in compensation - the money it saved by dumping the toxic waste in Abidjan rather than having it properly disposed of in the Netherlands. The Dutch also agreed to stop the personal court case against Trafigura's chairman, Claude Dauphin, in exchange for a 67,000 euro fine. [32] |
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cite news}}
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![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Hi – I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts but as I see it there are a few issues with the intro:
A possible redraft could be...
...referencing these three (not David Leigh btw – that's ended up at the bottom of this page from a post by Alcea setosa in 2011):
Thanks. HOgilvy ( talk) 22:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
Hi,
This article currently lacks important information about Trafigura's history, business activities and company structure. This was touched on as an issue by Petrolmaps further up this talk page in 2010, in a thread that also involved Eraserhead1 and SmartSE. Let me declare straight away that I work for Bell Pottinger, a London-based PR firm, and that Trafigura is my client – please see my user page for more info. I will register my COI on COIN shortly. I notice that there have been large non-consensus edits by two IPs recently that have been speedily reverted. Let me be clear that I intend to work with the community to update and improve this article by seeking consensus on neutral, accurate content that is presently missing. I understand that – as has been mentioned on this page – such information hasn't always been easy to find, but there are in fact a good number of credible secondary sources on this company and its activities that I think warrant some attention.
First of all, please see a proposed Company History section in this user space here. This is fully referenced using the appropriate citation templates and is ready for review. Please feel free to leave feedback here, on COIN, on my talk page or on the talk page of the user space. Many thanks. HOgilvy ( talk) 20:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
I took a look at and incorporated my own version of the "Activities" section. I think using an annual report-type document is appropriate for issues of corporate structure and for a comprehensive, up-to-date account of the company's primary activities that (for a B2B company) are often not reported in the media (or outdated when reported), however the material had far too much weight for use of a primary source, especially when it comes to details about contract terms, which is information best suited for Trafigura customers, as oppose to the public (our target audience). Some of the information I trimmed might be better suited for the Corporate structure section. CorporateM ( Talk) 14:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
It took me a while to realize that various sections of the article were all referring to the same controversial toxic waste dump in Côte d'Ivoire, which has its own article at 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump. I have used the Lede of the sub-article instead following WP:SUMMARY, but am keeping the more extended content in storage here so I (or someone else) can cull through it and perhaps recover some of the content for this article's summary or to enhance the main article on the spill. CorporateM ( Talk) 13:50, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
storage
|
---|
Toxic waste in Côte d'IvoireIn May 2009, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that it had obtained conclusive proof that Trafigura had released toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire. [1] The BBC News programme Newsnight also reported in May that the dumping of waste in Côte d'Ivoire had led to deaths and serious health consequences. Trafigura denied this and attempted to sue the programme for libel. [2] In August 2009, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that Trafigura Beheer and its lawyers sued the Dutch government in order to keep a document of the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) secret. This document had been given to the lawyers of the victims of Cote d'Ivoire toxic waste. Trafigura wants this decision to be reversed on the basis that the victims are not a party to the Dutch case under Dutch law, and claim it would do them irreparable damage if published. The contents of the document are, according to the newspaper, not challenged by Trafigura. The newspaper stated that the NFI determined that the contents of the tanker had been 528,000 litres of extremely alkaline waste constituting 6.8% sulfur, for 3.5% alkyl- thiols and 0.5% hydrogen sulfide. [3] According to a September 2009 UN report, posted by Wikileaks, [4] the dumping drove 108,000 people to seek medical attention. On September 4, 2009, the court decided that the prosecutor should not have given the documents to Leigh Day & Co, the lawyers of the victims, because there was no direct relation between the environmental crime that Trafigura was a suspect of in The Netherlands and for which the samples were taken and analyzed, and the dumping in Côte d’Ivoire. It might be possible that the lawyers of the litigants could receive the documents, but for this a different procedure would need to be followed. The Dutch government was required to demand the return of the documents, and require that Leigh Day not make use of the documents in the civil case in the United Kingdom. [5] On September 16, 2009, a BBC Newsnight broadcast claimed to have uncovered evidence revealing that oil-trading company Trafigura knew that waste dumped in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006 was hazardous. [6] The Independent published a story about the dumping of the waste on September 17, but later removed the story from their website. The story in question has been archived on Wikileaks. [7] On December 12, 2009 the BBC removed its online video of Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean's report on Newsnight on 13 May, and also deleted the associated BBC News online article. Their action was presumed to be a response to a demand by Trafigura's lawyers in their ongoing libel action. Bloggers responded by reposting the video on YouTube and linking to it. [8] Subsequently Wikileaks has published the defence the BBC prepared against the libel suit brought by Trafigura [9] and Richard Wilson and Calum Carr have published the Court File containing Trafigura’s reply. [10] [11] On December 17, 2009, the BBC withdrew one of the allegations it made during the May 2009 Newsnight broadcast, acknowledging that the allegation could not be proven. [12] Later that day, the BBC broadcast an apology to Trafigura on Newsnight. [13] The BBC however added: "The BBC has played a leading role in bringing to the public's attention the actions of Trafigura in the illegal dumping of 500 tons of hazardous waste", and "The dumping caused a public health emergency with tens of thousands of people seeking treatment." Trafigura had only brought the libel action against a single aspect of Newsnight's reporting, the BBC statement went on: "Experts in the [compensation] case were not able to establish a link between the waste and serious long-term consequences, including deaths." [14] At ALEV Alastair Mullis, of Norwich Law School, argued that the BBC paid damages as they could not substantiate the claims of the deaths: Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, rebutted. The video of this can be found here. [15] In July 2010 Trafigura was convicted in Amsterdam of illegally exporting the toxic waste to Africa and fined one million euros. [16] Super-injunctionOn October 12, 2009 The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented by a legal injunction applied for by London libel lawyers Carter Ruck (the name of the legal firm being the only fact the Guardian were free to report in the case) from covering remarks made in Parliament. It complied with this super-injunction and neither named the questioner nor published the question. [17] The Spectator also speculated that the gagging order involved Trafigura and noted that Trafigura became a trending topic on Twitter with the story shared and distributed through numerous weblinks. [18] [19] The Guardian confirmed that Trafigura was the source of the gagging order, after the order was lifted the next day. [20] The question that they were unable to report was from Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme:
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation have published the report in question and a copy of the gagging order against The Guardian on their website. [22] [23] Comedian and author Stephen Fry played a key role in spreading the story via his popular Twitter page, describing the gagging order as "outrageous, grotesque and squalid". [24] Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian described the injunction as "a fantastic own goal". [25] According to a press release on the website of the lawyers acting for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, the reason that The Guardian could not report the question asked by Paul Farrelly was because a gagging order has been in place since 11 September 2009, before the MP asked the question. They also stated that it had never been their intention to prevent the press reporting on Parliament and that they had since agreed on changes with The Guardian to the gagging order so that they could report on the issue. [26] On the evening of 16 October 2009, it was reported that the injunction had been lifted and the report published. [27] The debate in parliamentEvan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, secured a Westminster Hall debate on the gagging, conducted on 21 October 2009. A partner at Carter Ruck, Adam Tudor, wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, claiming that the matter was sub judice, but the debate did take place. [28] During the debate, Denis MacShane asked "do we not need to see the partners of Carter-Ruck brought before the bar of the House to apologise publicly for this attempt to suborn parliamentary democracy?" Evan Harris drew the government's attention to the fact that although the injunction had been dropped, Carter-Ruck were continuing with a libel action by Trafigura against the BBC's Newsnight programme. Carter-Ruck told Newsnight that they must not repeat an allegation that deaths were caused by the dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire, even though Hansard, in 2007, reported the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations laid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before Parliament and a memorandum of explanation to those regulations stated: "The recent example of the release of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire leading to the deaths of a number of people and the hospitalisation of thousands underlines the risks involved in the movement and management of waste.'" Harris asked: "[H]ow can it be that that can be in Hansard, yet there are still threats of legal action against Newsnight?" As the debate was winding up, Bridget Prentice, the Justice Minister, said that the government were concerned about the over-use of super-injunctions. She would consider whether further guidelines needed to be issued to the judiciary, and she stressed that the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, which allowed the proceedings of Parliament to be reported without interference, was still in force. In the debate, Peter Bottomley read the URL of the report in Parliament to make sure it was in the public domain. [29] On 27 May 2010, the UK's only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, used her maiden speech in the House of Commons to question ongoing media restrictions surrounding Trafigura. [30] 2012In September 2012, Amnesty International and Greenpeace Netherlands published the results of a 3-year investigation into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump, in a report entitled "The Toxic Truth". [31] The report accused Trafigura of a series of failings, describing the toxic waste dumping as "a story of corporate crime, human rights abuse and governments’ failure to protect people and the environment". Amnesty International and Greenpeace called for the company to be prosecuted in the UK over the incident. The report included a formal response from Trafigura, in which the company contested the report's findings, arguing that it contained "significant inaccuracies and misrepresentations". According to Amnesty International and Greenpeace "Trafigura did not name any specific inaccuracies or misrepresentations". On 16 November 2012 Trafigura and the Dutch authorities agreed to a settlement. The settlement obliges Trafigura to pay the existing 1 million euro fine and in addition the company must also pay Dutch authorities a further 300,000 euros in compensation - the money it saved by dumping the toxic waste in Abidjan rather than having it properly disposed of in the Netherlands. The Dutch also agreed to stop the personal court case against Trafigura's chairman, Claude Dauphin, in exchange for a 67,000 euro fine. [32] |
{{
cite news}}
: Check date values in: |date=
(
help)
{{
cite web}}
: |author=
has numeric name (
help)