Trafigura gagging order on toxic waste dumping memo overturned by blogosphere and Twitter users

Fantastic news that the gagging order brought by the law firm Carter-Ruck (as seen on a semi-regular basis in the pages of Private Eye) on behalf of the Swiss oil trader Trafigura, has been abandoned.

The order was intended to prevent the media reporting three questions asked in the House of Commons by Paul Farrelly MP to Jack Straw about the alleged dumping of toxic waste by Trafigura along the Ivory Coast in 2006, including a report called the Minton Report into the dumping.

The questions are:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistle-blowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will (a) collect and (b) publish statistics on the number of non-reportable injunctions issued by the High Court in each of the last five years.

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what mechanisms HM Court Service uses to draw up rosters of duty judges for the purpose of considering time of the essence applications for the issuing of injunctions by the High Court."

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As Adam Timworth reports, the Guardian had the sense to tweet about this (which means posting a message on Twitter). This was picked up by other users, and the Spectator also blogged on this.

Tweets with a link to the Minton report, which can be read on the excellent Wikileaks, were sent out by users with the hashtag #tragfigura, enabling others to search for updates. The topic also became a "trending topic", meaning it was one of the topics most talked about on Twitter, with the hashtag #tragfigura on the front page.

Realising that their use of Britain's vile libel laws to prevent honest reporting had failed, Carter-Ruck have now given up on the gagging order! Hooray!

If you want to read more articles on the subject of Trafigura or the British libel laws, Joanne Jacobs has done a fantastic job of collating links on these subjects.

You can also see emails from Trafigura staff about the dumping of toxic waste on the BBC's Newsnight subsite.

As John Cook in Gawker says:

While we're outraged and incensed and filled with righteous anger about the ability of a multinational company to, however briefly, blatantly and unabashedly gag the press...we have to admit that we're thrilled by the outcome here. We never would have heard of Trafigura if the idiots hadn't tried to pull this off, and chances are, neither would you.