The Nederlands Foresnic Institute (NFI) did some work on the Trafigura Probo Koala toxic waste dump in Abidjan 2006. In Beirut, March 17-18, 2009 the director of NFI gave a presentation about environmental crime at a UNDP-POGAR conference in Beirut, and gave Trafigura's action as an example of such a crime.
According to this (francophone) site , record of his presentation was removed from the conference site. The NFI man, whose name, it has to be said, is Perry C Quak, is indeed on the conference programme, but his presentation does not appear on the list of conference documents.
This site has a copy of the NFI power point presentation (as .pdf). If it gets taken down, I have a copy on my machine.
Relevant slide
Hundreds of tons of highly toxic waste…
… and the consequences:
- 17 dead
- 26,000 injured
- huge damage
to environment
“Probo Koala”
Judicial consequences, 2 years later:
– Ivorian CEO: 20 years of imprisonment
– Ivorian advisor: 5 years of imprisonment
– Dutch transporters: 152,000,000 dollar fine
And why did the offenders do it?
– high profits: unlawful dumping of toxic waste saves a lot of money
He is calling for a specialised Functional Public Prosecutor's office to deal with environmental crime.
If it is true that Trafigura forced a UNDP conference to delete reference to this presentation, it shows how desperate they are to expunge any reference to their actions.
Goebbels would have been impressed.
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