10 Most Unethical Business Actions


#9 Trafigura: The Irresponsible Citizen

Like in U. K. the media always had to fight with celebrities over the former getting threatened by the celebrities for reporting on their various misdeeds and dirty activities. This trend actually has its roots in a far more serious issue happened in 2006.

Trafigura is an MNC formed in 1993. Trading in base metals and energy, including oil it makes almost $80 billion a year. In 2006, the company caused a health crisis affecting 108,000 people.

It all began when the waste management company hired by  Trafigura told that the price of transferring the waste on board to the processing plant in the Netherlands had been increased twenty-fold, due to the higher toxicity levels than expected. To avoid the extra expense, Trafigura ordered the ship to dock at other seaports until they could find some other company to dump the waste.

The waste was finally handed over to a newly formed inexperienced company, Compagnie Tommy, at Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, one of Africa’s largest seaports. The company dumped the waste illegally, instead of processing it. The exposure to this highly toxic waste caused many residents there became sick.

Investigations were done to determine whether it was intentionally dumped by Trafigura. Trafigura, on the other hand, wanted a safer side and made a press statement that their waste has undergone ample tests and it is found not to be as toxic as it had been claimed. Later a 2009 UN report posted by Wikileaks proved this false.

When newspapers came to publish their own findings, which proved Trafigura guilty, the company started firing legal notices to all such news outlets. The Guardian newspaper had sufficient evidence against Trafigura to report; however the libel suit from the company prevented it from publishing the report until a court decision was made. This made MP Evan Harris to question the freedom of the press in the country. However, there was a twitter campaign spreading the whole story in a matter of hours, and the libel suit was backed down and it allowed the report to be published.