AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - February 14 - Greenpeace condemns the deal struck between the Presidency of the Cote d’Ivoire and the Trafigura group. Trafigura will reportedly pay € 152 million towards clean-up costs, without accepting liability or responsibility for the dumping of highly toxic chemical wastes from their ship, the Probo Koala.(1) In return, the President has agreed to drop all charges against the company and its executives (who will now be released from prison) and undertaken not to pursue any further financial claims against the Trafigura.
The results of the criminal investigations in Cote
d’Ivoire, The Netherlands and Estonia have not yet been published and the
committee commissioned by Cote d’Ivoire to look into the international
implications of the disaster (CIEDT/Commission
Internationale d’Enquete sur les Dechets Toxiques dans le District d’Abidjan)
is scheduled to publish its report today, 14th of February 2007. The
report, which was commissioned by the Cote d’Ivoire government, will attribute
responsibilities of international players.
“One cannot do justice without knowing the facts in
their entirety. At this stage, it would have been more appropriate to secure a
provisional settlement with an advance payment, rather than one that closes the
books definitively, especially when the full extent of liabilities have not yet
been determined,” said Jasper Teulings, Senior Legal Counsel, Greenpeace
International.
Although this settlement has no bearing on the legal
rights of the victims of this disaster, it is feared that the victims will now
receive little, if any, support from their government in pursuing justice.
“This Faustian deal may provide
the Cote D’Ivoire the much-needed funds to deal with the clean-up, but it is by
no means fair. Trade in hazardous waste is a serious crime under international
law (2), and by agreeing to this deal, the President has signed away his
country’s right to bring a criminal corporation to justice,” said Helen
Perivier, Toxics Campaigner, Greenpeace International, “The ease with which
international environmental laws are broken and questionable deals exchanged
for real justice, painfully highlights yet again, that the international
community creates laws but simply lacks the political will to implement and
enforce them.”
Notes to Editor
1. On 19 and 20 August 2006 the Panamanian flagged ship Probo Koala, chartered by the multinational oil trading firm Trafigura, unloaded over 580 tonnes of petrochemical waste into trucks that then dumped the waste in around 13 open air sites in neighbourhoods throughout Abidjan, the commercial capital of Côte d’Ivoire. Exposure to the toxic wastes led to the death of several Cote d’Ivoire residents, and numerous cases of intoxication.
2. The important amendment to the Basel Convention, the Basel Ban, as well as the Bamako Convention, contains strict rules against the export of waste from developed to developing countries. The Basel Ban has been adopted as EU law and clearly applies to this case.
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