[News] from [guardian.co.uk]
[World news > Trafigura and the Probo Koala]
Trafigura offers £1,000 each to toxic dumping victimsIvory Coast claimants would share £30m payout equally, with no extra for worst affected and nothing for relatives of the dead
David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009 16.47 BST Article history
The 30,000 victims of a toxic waste disaster in Ivory Coast are being offered £1,000 each in compensation, a representative of the survivors said today.
Sources in Abidjan, the country's main city, said about 20,000 of the victims of the toxic dumping had so far been told of the offer by the oil trading firm Trafigura and virtually all had accepted. But one quoted by Reuters said he would have preferred a graduated offer according to the severity of alleged injuries.
The payout offer would amount to about £30m in total, which represents slightly more than 10% of Trafigura's declared annual profits. It represents less than the £100m cheque Trafigura wrote in 2007 to the country's government to pay for a clean-up and to make some payments to the families of 16 people who had died.
That previous payment, which the company made without any admission of liability, led to the release of the company president, Claude Dauphin, from an Ivorian jail and the scrapping of criminal prosecutions there.
The confidential negotiations are likely to include a further payment for the costs of the British law firm Leigh Day, which took on the case on a no-win, no-fee basis and is thought to have risked more than £10m. Leigh Day's original claim for the victims was for another £100m, which would have given them just over £3,000 each.
Trafigura did not comment on the reported size of the deal or on suggestions the amounts were too low. The victims' lawyer, Martyn Day, who is in Abidjan consulting his clients, also declined to comment.
Marvin Outtarra, described as the president of the Union of Victims of Toxic Waste, told Reuters: "This compensation to be shared equally among all the victims doesn't work for me. Trafigura has given no compensation to the families of the deceased and the amount of compensation of 750,000 CFA francs does not vary based on the severity of the injuries." London-based Trafigura declared profits of $440m (£270m) last year on turnover of more than $70bn. Its traders are reported to receive annual bonuses of up to $1m.
The existence of negotiations to pay out Trafigura victims was announced this week as the company faced publication of damning internal emails in the Guardian, on the BBC and in the Netherlands and Norway. They revealed Trafigura knew that its waste from processing contaminated fuel was highly toxic and banned in Europe. Company traders referred to it as "shit".
Trafigura arranged for it to be dumped cheaply in Ivory Coast in 2006. Thousands of inhabitants of Abidjan subsequently besieged hospitals, saying they were choking, vomiting and had skin eruptions. A UN report this week found there was "strong prima facie evidence" Trafigura's waste was to blame.
[World news > Trafigura and the Probo Koala]
Trafigura offers £1,000 each to toxic dumping victimsIvory Coast claimants would share £30m payout equally, with no extra for worst affected and nothing for relatives of the dead
David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009 16.47 BST Article history
The 30,000 victims of a toxic waste disaster in Ivory Coast are being offered £1,000 each in compensation, a representative of the survivors said today.
Sources in Abidjan, the country's main city, said about 20,000 of the victims of the toxic dumping had so far been told of the offer by the oil trading firm Trafigura and virtually all had accepted. But one quoted by Reuters said he would have preferred a graduated offer according to the severity of alleged injuries.
The payout offer would amount to about £30m in total, which represents slightly more than 10% of Trafigura's declared annual profits. It represents less than the £100m cheque Trafigura wrote in 2007 to the country's government to pay for a clean-up and to make some payments to the families of 16 people who had died.
That previous payment, which the company made without any admission of liability, led to the release of the company president, Claude Dauphin, from an Ivorian jail and the scrapping of criminal prosecutions there.
The confidential negotiations are likely to include a further payment for the costs of the British law firm Leigh Day, which took on the case on a no-win, no-fee basis and is thought to have risked more than £10m. Leigh Day's original claim for the victims was for another £100m, which would have given them just over £3,000 each.
Trafigura did not comment on the reported size of the deal or on suggestions the amounts were too low. The victims' lawyer, Martyn Day, who is in Abidjan consulting his clients, also declined to comment.
Marvin Outtarra, described as the president of the Union of Victims of Toxic Waste, told Reuters: "This compensation to be shared equally among all the victims doesn't work for me. Trafigura has given no compensation to the families of the deceased and the amount of compensation of 750,000 CFA francs does not vary based on the severity of the injuries." London-based Trafigura declared profits of $440m (£270m) last year on turnover of more than $70bn. Its traders are reported to receive annual bonuses of up to $1m.
The existence of negotiations to pay out Trafigura victims was announced this week as the company faced publication of damning internal emails in the Guardian, on the BBC and in the Netherlands and Norway. They revealed Trafigura knew that its waste from processing contaminated fuel was highly toxic and banned in Europe. Company traders referred to it as "shit".
Trafigura arranged for it to be dumped cheaply in Ivory Coast in 2006. Thousands of inhabitants of Abidjan subsequently besieged hospitals, saying they were choking, vomiting and had skin eruptions. A UN report this week found there was "strong prima facie evidence" Trafigura's waste was to blame.
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