Richard Wilson's blog

At first glance, it’s difficult to see why Trafigura’s lawyers Carter-Ruck would go to such trouble to get a media gag on Paul Farrelly MP’s Parliamentary Question about the press freedom implications of the Trafigura case. For the most part, the cat’s already out of the bag, and Trafigura (and Carter-Ruck) have already been roundly exposed for the [expletive of choice here]s they undoubtedly are.

But there is one detail in the banned Parliamentary question that seems mysteriously un-reported in the UK media: Paul Farrelly’s reference to “the Minton report”. No UK news article on Trafigura makes any mention of this report, but you can find some references to it in the non-UK press.

Fortunately, by the power of wikileaks (and the sleuthing of @csdenton) you can read the report here.

The existence of the Minton report, which was given to Trafigura in 2006 but only recently disclosed, suggests that, despite their denials, the company may in fact have been aware from an early stage that the cargo of waste that ended up getting dumped in Ivory Coast was highly toxic.

Trafigura now seem so keen on suppressing this information that they (and Carter-Ruck) have attempted to gag the UK media from reporting proceedings at the heart of our democracy in order to stop the truth from getting out.