Trafigura no stranger to controversy
Trafigura Beheer BV, the oil trading company that controversially bankrolled the People’s National Party to the tune of $31 million last month, is no stranger to controversial and questionable practices.
Founded in 1993 by a group of eight independent oil traders, Trafigura Beheer BV is a subsidiary of the Trafigura Group, which specialises in energy and base metals, and is represented in 36 countries worldwide. Last year, the group, which is domiciled in Holland but headquartered in Switzerland, made US$28.4 billion.
Just last month, the company was fingered as the one responsible for the dumping of 528,000 litres of toxic chemical waste at 15 sites in and around the west African city of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The toxic waste has been blamed for the deaths of seven persons, and led to more that 52,000 seeking medical assistance.
Two senior executives of Trafigura, Claude Dauphin, a director and Jean-Pierre Valentini, manager for West Africa, have been arrested in Ivory Coast pending an investigation into the dumping.
In a press statement released yesterday, Trafigura insisted that its tests showed that the waste dumped was not toxic, and therefore could not be the source of the deaths and sickness in Abidjan.
“The slops discharged were not toxic waste. They were a mix of gasoline blend stock, spent caustic soda and water,” the company said in its release.
In the same release, however, Trafigura announced that it has begun legal proceedings against Compagnie Tommy, the Ivory Coast-certified disposal agent that it contracted to dispose of the waste.
Before the toxic waste dumping scandal, Trafigura was, in May this year, convicted of lying to two American energy companies when it said that 500,000 barrels of imported Iraqi oil sold to them in 2001 were sourced in compliance with the United Nations Oil-For-Food Programme. The Oil-For-Food Programme began in 1995 and was intended to allow the heavily sanctioned nation of Iraq to sell oil in order to buy food and medicine for ordinary citizens.
When the matter came before the courts, Trafigura pleaded guilty and was sentenced in accordance with a plea agreement to pay a US$8-million fine and to forfeit US$9.9 million, the amount of money it earned from the illegal oil shipments to two US companies.
The plea agreement made with the US Department of Justice reads in part: “In May 2001, Trafigura AG marketed and sold (Basrah Light crude oil) totalling approximately 2,022,000 barrels to two oil refinery customers in Houston, Texas. In selling this oil to the two Houston companies, Trafigura warranted to its customers that the oil was ‘obtained pursuant to all necessary approvals and in accordance with all applicable procedures of UN Resolution 986 and the UN Security Council Committee established by SCR 661’. This was a false statement and the defendant lacked reasonable cause to believe the truth of such statement.”
According to a BusinessWeek magazine report in July 2005, Trafigura has been linked to former fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who was described as “the most wanted white-collar criminal in US history until his controversial pardon on President Bill Clinton’s last day in office in 2001”.
Trafigura, according to the magazine, was started with Rich funds and is currently run by two ‘Rich Boys’, Marc Rich protégés Eric deTurckheim and the imprisoned Dauphin.