INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW

Intellectual Property Law



Intellectual Property Law

Trafigura is an Amsterdam-based multinational company founded in 1993 trading in base metals and energy, including oil. In 2008, the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit. By 2011, its revenue had increased to $121.5 billion and its profits to $1.11 billion.

It operates from 55 offices in 36 countries in Europe and North America, Central America, and South America, as well as in the Middle and Far East. It is the world's third largest private oil and metals trader after Vitol and Glencore.

Trafigura was set up by Claude Dauphin and Eric de Turckheim. It split off from a group of companies managed by Marc Rich in 1993. Dauphin owns less than 20% of the company, with the rest owned by 500 senior staff Trafigura has been named or involved in several scandals since its creation. (Johnson 2003 163)

The company was named in the Iraq Oil-for-Food Scandal in connection with the Essex, a Liberian registered "turbine-tanker" that had UN approval to load Iraqi crude at Iraq's main export terminal at Mina al-Bakr. The tanker was chartered by Trafigura Beheer BV and according to its captain, Theofanis Chiladakis, the Essex was at least twice 'topped off' with an extra 272,000 barrels of crude after UN monitors had signed off the cargo. This was on May 13 and August 27, 2001. Elf-Aquitaine employees had first talked about this scheme in February 1998.

A Trafigura subsidiary called Roundhead, Inc. had bought the oil from a subsidiary of the French oil trader, Ibex Energy and claimed it paid Ibex a "premium" of 40 cents per barrel over the official United Nations selling price. In early October 2001, the Essex was intercepted off the coast of Curaçao before it could offload its illegal cargo. This resulted in more than US$5 million in additional shipping costs for Trafigura, and led them to sue Ibex in a London court for having misled them. But Ibex managing director Jean-Paul Cayre claimed in an affidavit that Trafigura had cooked up the scheme to "make up for an earlier loss on an Iraqi oil deal that fell through in 1999." (Massie 2009 21)

In May 2007, the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant reported that the press officer of Trafigura, operating under the username Press Office T NL, attempted to alter the Dutch Wikipedia article "Probo Koala" on three separate occasions, with intent to clear the company's name. The paper was then temporarily locked by Wikipedia administrators so that it could not be modified. (Leigh 2009 9-11)

In August 2009, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that Trafigura Beheer and its lawyers sued the Dutch government in order to keep a document of the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) secret. This document had been given to the lawyers of the victims of Cote d'Ivoire toxic waste. Trafigura wants this decision to be reversed on the basis that the victims are not a party to the ...