Gagging order throws light on Trafigura

Although it is the world's third largest independent oil trader, Trafigura was largely unknown outside the industry until last night. That all changed after an injunction taken out against the Guardian yesterday unleashed a storm of criticism driven by political bloggers and users of Twitter.

The paper was told yesterday that it could not reveal the text of a question asked by a MP in Parliament. That injunction was lifted today, but not before bloggers had revealed that the question, put by Labour MP Paul Farrelly, a former journalist, related in part to Trafigura and the alleged dumping of toxic waste in Cote d'Ivoire in 2006.

Trafigura's operations are directed mainly out of Amsterdam, but much of the 1.5 million barrels of oil it trades every day is transacted through its London offices.

In August 2006, the Probo Koala, a ship chartered by Trafigura, docked at Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. There, toxic waste - which was referred to by Trafigura employees in London as "slops" - was handed over to a local contractor who dumped it in landfill sites around the city. The "slops" were in fact the waste resulting from the removal of impurities from cheap, contaminated 'coker gasoline' originating in Mexico.

This process is known as 'caustic washing' and the resulting waste is so toxic that it is banned in most countries.

A UN report into the affair claimed: "According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations... there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping".

Trafigura has always insisted that the waste was harmless and although it paid out £30m in September after a class action suit brought by thousands of Ivorians, the company did not accept legal liability.

However, this is not the only time Trafigura has been accused of being involved in the caustic washing of Mexican coker gasoline.

Months after unloading toxic waste in Abidjan, Trafigura is said to have delivered 150,000 tonnes of Mexican coker gasoline to be cleaned by Vest Tank in Norway.

In May 2007, a tank at the Vest Tank facility exploded, sending a highly polluted cloud of sulphurous gas into the air. Hundreds of people from Slovag, a nearby village, later fell ill. There is no suggestion that Trafigura themselves were to blame for the disaster. But after the explosion, the Norwegian police said that Trafigura had refused their requests to talk with some of the employees involved in the shipping of the coker gasoline.

Trafigura, which last year had a turnover of $73bn, was founded in 1993 by Claude Dauphin (above left), Eric de Turkheim and Graham Sharp. Dauphin and de Turkheim had cut their teeth working alongside Marc Rich, an oil trader involved in sanctions-busting deals in Iran and South Africa who was wanted by US authorities for tax evasion - until his controversial pardon by Bill Clinton, the outgoing US president, in 2001. Dauphin and de Turkheim were not involved in Rich's activities.

Now Paul Farrelly's question in parliament, and the publicity caused by the abandoned injunction, risks once again unearthing the ghosts of Dauphin, de Turkheim and Trafigura's past. ·