The Minton Report (Trafigura)

In August 2006 waste from the ship Probo Koala, which the commodities trader Trafigura had arranged to be disposed of, was dumped around Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; hundreds of people went to hospitals saying they had been poisoned, and thousands reported illness. In September 2006 Trafigura's then lawyers commissioned the scientific consultants Minton, Treharne & Davies to produce a confidential study. The draft by John Minton said that, on the limited information provided, the waste was potentially toxic and 'capable of causing severe human health effects', that early reports of illness were consistent with a release of hydrogen sulphide gas, and that dumping it would have been illegal in Europe.

Trafigura said the report was preliminary and had proved inaccurate, and maintained that the waste could not have caused serious or fatal injuries. In September 2009 it agreed to pay more than £30m in compensation and legal costs to about 30,000 Abidjan residents to settle a UK lawsuit, while continuing to deny serious harm.

On 11 September 2009 Trafigura's solicitors, Carter-Ruck, obtained a High Court 'super-injunction' barring The Guardian from reporting the Minton report — and from reporting the existence of the injunction. I published the report through WikiLeaks on 14 September. On 12 October the Labour MP Paul Farrelly tabled a parliamentary question naming the injunction, and Carter-Ruck initially maintained that the order prevented The Guardian from reporting it, provoking criticism from MPs and widespread discussion online. The firm dropped that position on 13 October, and on 16 October released The Guardian from the restrictions, after which the newspaper published the report.

I did not identify our source. The Guardian reported that, while the injunction was in force, copies were also held by Greenpeace and Norwegian television as well as by us, which undermined its purpose. Trafigura's lawyers had argued that the report was confidential because it was prepared for possible litigation.

Trafigura did not dispute that the document was genuine; its chief financial officer later described the decision to seek the injunction as 'a heavy-handed approach' (The Daily Telegraph, quoted by The Guardian). The episode fed a wider parliamentary debate about the use of super-injunctions.