In the struggle to reveal details of the waste dumping in Ivory Coast, the Guardian and the BBC are not alone in attracting the attentions of Trafigura's lawyers brandishing gags. Here in Norway, at the national broadcaster, we too were issued with stern legal warnings. And so we published.
Norway has an important, if little reported, role in the Trafigura scandal. Back in 2006, as the Probo Koala tanker ship delivered waste to Ivory Coast, her sister ship, Probo Emu, was preparing for the same journey. But when controversy emerged in the west African state, Trafigura redirected the vessel to a tank facility in Norway. In October 2006, the ship delivered similar waste to the Vest Tank installation. Trafigura subsequently reached an agreement with the facility to treat six shiploads of the sulphurous coker naphtha, which produced the same kind of toxic waste that had been aboard the Probo Koala. In 2007 a tank exploded at Vest Tank, since which a number of people in the adjacent village of Sløvåg have fallen ill.
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK, received both the emails – which confirmed Trafigura executives had been aware in advance that their waste was hazardous – and the Minton report – which warned that the waste could be toxic, and "capable of causing severe human health effects" – at the same time as the Guardian, the BBC and Dutch newspaper Volkskrant. Trafigura has stated that the Minton report was a draft that has been superseded by reports contradicting the Minton conclusions after analysis of the actual slops.
When Trafigura learned the documents were in our possession, it sent an email through its lawyers warning us not to publish. It underlined the threat by informing us of the "super-injunction" against the Guardian, even enclosing a copy of the high court ruling. The NRK decided to publish it all. For a full month the Minton report, the court ruling and the internal email correspondence has been on our website.
The NRK has been pursuing the Trafigura story for two years, during which we have repeatedly attempted to get an interview with the company. It has not yet answered any of our questions. Instead it has chosen to communicate through statements from its public relations company, Bell Pottinger, and Norwegian lawyers.
This is a tactic that is new to us, in a country where the press is used to openness. Our answer has been to publish all correspondence with lawyers and PR firms on our website, in addition to all the questions we have ever asked Trafigura. In Norway it is not illegal to publish email correspondence, and disclaimers are not valid until the recipient of an email has agreed to confidentiality. The NRK has only once been contacted by the London-based law firm Carter-Ruck, and that was as early as June 2007, just after the explosion in Sløvåg. Carter-Ruck warned us against publishing any allegations about Trafigura. We published our stories regardless, and since then Trafigura has been represented by one of Norway's major law firms.
In June 2008 we were ready to broadcast a 50-minute documentary revealing what happened at Vest Tank and disclosing Trafigura's chemical processes. Trafigura had declined any participation in the documentary, but still we invited the company to see the programme before it was aired. We told Trafigura that we would correct any factual mistakes if it could prove us wrong.
Representatives of Trafigura viewed the documentary but only produced a general statement in which they vigorously denied any wrongdoing. The documentary, Dirty Cargo, was aired as planned, without any legal consequences.
A Norwegian supreme court ruling in 2007 put an end to the use of injunctions as a tactic. Here, the press works to the principle of publish and be damned. Libel cases are put forward to the Press Ethics Committee.
If the committee rules against the press, we are obliged to publish the verdict. In publishing the Trafigura documents, however, we still faced the great risk that we might become victims of libel tourism. This means that Trafigura can sue us from London for the materials on the site, using British law. But this is a risk we are willing to take, so important is the case. As investigative journalists it is our duty to the people of western Norway to bring forward this kind of vital information.
We welcome Trafigura's view – but it has refused invitations to comment, saying it could not do so while under police investigation. Nor has it been willing to satisfactorily answer the Norwegian police, who have mounted an investigation into Vest Tank's alleged illegal import of waste on the Probo Emu. The investigation has been under way for more than a year, but Trafigura has not yet given a statement. According to Norwegian police, Trafigura has demanded that it receive all the questions in advance before it will agree to questioning – a condition with which it is impossible for the police to comply.
Kjersti Knudssøn and Synnøve Bakke. Both are journalists at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.