Talk:Trafigura/Archives/2014

Intro
Hi – I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts but as I see it there are a few issues with the intro:
 * Glencore and Vital: There's no mention of Trafigura in the Glencore and Vitol entries – perhaps it would be more succinct/appropriate just to say "one of the world’s leading international commodity traders".
 * Claude Dauphin and Eric de Turckheim: As the |L'AGEFI article referenced in the Corporate History section makes clear, there were other founders besides Claude Dauphin and Eric de Turckheim. These are now listed in that new section so this should be removed.
 * Marc Rich: The connection to Marc Rich predates the company so should it be part of the intro?
 * Dauphin's 20% share: Dauphin’s stake and the remaining share owned by staff are also made clear (and up-to-date) in the Corporate History section, so this should also be removed.
 * Trafigura certainly was involved in the Cote d'Ivoire scandal, but should this be in the intro, i.e. is it essential top-line information about the company? I suspect this intro was written when the Cote d'Ivoire incident was pretty much all there was to know about Trafigura, but it was now 8 years ago. It clearly has a place in the article, that’s a given, but does it have a place in the intro?
 * Trafigura is notable for having increased its turnover sevenfold in just under a decade.

A possible redraft could be...


 * Trafigura is one of the world’s leading international commodity traders, specialising in the oil, minerals and metals markets. Founded in 1993, the company is owned by its founding shareholders and senior management. Trafigura’s turnover has grown from USD18 billion in 2004 to USD133 billion in 2013. The group is registered in The Netherlands and operates globally with 81 offices in 56 countries.

...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):
 * |FT: Trafigura shuns stock market float
 * |FT: Trafigura’s profits boosted following bitumen disposal
 * |Bond Prospectus 17 Apr 2013

Thanks. HOgilvy (talk) 22:05, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Additional content: history, business activities and company structure
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)


 * Hi. Thanks for your openness. Having had a brief look at the content it certainly looks as if it will improve the article. It would be nice to have more information on the company's early history, but I presume as in 2010 that there are no sources discussing it. A few comments though:


 * The sourcing for 'Initially focused on three regional markets' etc. is poorly sourced - the bond offering is a primary source and you appear to have used WP:SYNTH to support 'the group has since diversified and expanded globally'.
 * Content about the Trafigura Foundation needs an independent reference. In my experience every large company has a charitable arm, but very few receive independent coverage.
 * Stylistically the content is very choppy. Can you try to make it flow a bit better? It's rarely necessary to include exact dates. Perhaps stucture it as 'assets/investments' and 'bonds' or something. This would make it easier for the reader to find information.
 * Language like 'securing' and 'enabling the group to strengthen its balance sheet without diluting existing shareholders' doesn't sound neutral to me. Try to write as boringly and simply as you can.
 * The majority of the information is about activities this year. Is there nothing else older?


 * Regarding the rest of the article... it's gotten worse since I last looked at it and a lot of the content should really be merged into 2006_Côte_d'Ivoire_toxic_waste_dump. You're not the person to do that though and I may not have the time myself.


 * Cheers SmartSE (talk) 21:08, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I just noticed that I never got round to citing this from a 2005 Business Week. It should be a useful source for you. SmartSE (talk) 21:14, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi SmartSE, thanks for your response.


 * On your first point, looking at that section against the two sources in light of your comments re WP:SYNTH, the ‘History of the Group’ section (pp.56) of the bond offering document contains the following passage:


 * ‘At its creation, the Group started by focusing on three markets in which it had extensive expertise: oil and minerals in South America, metals in Eastern Europe and oil in Africa. The Group rapidly expanded its activities geographically through internal growth, marginal acquisitions and strategic alliances to create a globally diversified company.’


 * So leaving aside for a moment the fact that it’s primary, we have one source describing geographical expansion and diversification, and another mentioning the number of offices and countries. Perhaps any synthesis/original research issues could be resolved by rewording the two sentences:


 * ‘Initially focused on three regional markets – South America (oil and minerals), Eastern Europe (metals) and Africa (oil) – Trafigura has since diversified and expanded globally.1 The group currently operates from 81 offices in 56 countries.2'


 * Secondly – and I’m aware that this is my personal knowledge that's not explicitly expressed anywhere in the public domain – but there are three important points that I think should be considered in relation to the bond prospectus:


 * This document was not written by Trafigura but was was compiled by the arrangers of the transaction (Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Scotland and DBS of Singapore) and legal counsels (Jones Day and Clifford Chance). It was then reviewed independently by Ernst and Young, which subsequently issued a comfort letter confirming the accuracy of its factual information. Finally, it was reviewed and signed off by the Singapore Stock Exchange before the bond was issued.


 * I realise that this still makes it the output of company affiliates rather than of media outlets and so it can’t be considered a secondary source in the usual sense, but I think it’s important to clarify the process and to note that it was not produced by Trafigura itself.


 * The document makes available to the public an exceptional level of detail and disclosure about the company and the wider industry that will not be found elsewhere in traditional media sources. That cannot be overemphasised – it’s one of those very common scenarios in which important and neutral information is missing from an article because of a lack of conventional third party media coverage coupled with a rigid attitude to primary sources.


 * With that in mind, given the neutrality of the sentence in question, and provided nothing is inferred from the document in a way that would constitute original research, could this not be an occasion in which a primary source is used in place of a preferable, but in this case unavailable, secondary source?


 * On your second point, here is an article in French on the L’AGEFI website that gives more detail on the Trafigura Foundation. The opening sentence, which translates as, ‘After five years of existence, the Trafigura Foundation evolves, while preserving the fundamental principles that guide its action, centred on three pillars – sustainable development, education and integration, and health’ – could be used to support the following sentence: ‘Trafigura’s charitable arm, the Trafigura Foundation, now in its fifth year, supports sustainable development, education and integration, and health initiatives around the world.’


 * Regarding the choppy style, I see your point and I’ve tried to make it read like less of a list, and have rearranged the content into ‘Major investments’, ‘Bond issuances and reported earnings’, and ‘The Trafigura Foundation’.


 * On neutrality of the style, I have replaced ‘securing more than 250 petrol stations…’ with ‘acquiring more than 250 petrol stations…’, and have replaced ‘enabling the group to strengthen its balance sheet without diluting existing shareholders’ with simply ‘leaving existing shareholders undiluted’.


 * There is a shortage, as you say, of information on the company’s earlier history – I have however added a sentence on the establishment in 2003 of its fund management subsidiary, Galena Asset Management.


 * I have updated the draft according to the suggestions above – your feedback on the revised version would be very much appreciated. Many thanks indeed. HOgilvy (talk) 21:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Apologies for taking so long to look at this again. It's certainly an improvement over the current article, so I have moved most of the content from your draft and edited it along the way. I still don't agree about including the foundation info - the video in that article hardly gives me confidence about the independence of their reporting. If it gets more coverage elsewhere I might be persuaded otherwise. SmartSE (talk) 21:13, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi SmartSE, understood and thanks for taking the time. I'll be submitting more proposed content to my user space in due course, so if you're okay to take a look when you have a spare moment that would be great. I'll let you know – thanks again. HOgilvy (talk) 16:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Activities
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)

Côte d'Ivoire
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)

Toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire
In May 2009, the British newspaper The Guardian reported that it had obtained conclusive proof that Trafigura had released toxic waste in Côte d'Ivoire. 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.

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. According to a September 2009 UN report, posted by Wikileaks, 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.

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. 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.

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. Subsequently Wikileaks has published the defence the BBC prepared against the libel suit brought by Trafigura and Richard Wilson and Calum Carr have published the Court File containing Trafigura’s reply.

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. Later that day, the BBC broadcast an apology to Trafigura on Newsnight. 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." 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.

In July 2010 Trafigura was convicted in Amsterdam of illegally exporting the toxic waste to Africa and fined one million euros.

Super-injunction
On 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.

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. The Guardian confirmed that Trafigura was the source of the gagging order, after the order was lifted the next day. The question that they were unable to report was from Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme: "To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire, commissioned by Trafigura."

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation have published the report in question and a copy of the gagging order against The Guardian on their website. 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".

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian described the injunction as "a fantastic own goal". 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.

On the evening of 16 October 2009, it was reported that the injunction had been lifted and the report published.

The debate in parliament
Evan 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. 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. 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.

2012
In 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".

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.