Trafigura

[johnny9fingers]

Nice to know what the lives of Ivory Coast natives are worth according to Trafigura.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/trafigura-victims-compensation-offer

Actually nothing, nada, zilch, a big fat zero.

The Ivory Coast authorities should not have let Claude Dauphin out of prison until the scale of damages for the victims had been dealt with alongside the cost of the clean-up. The rather impressive sum of £1,000 each for the victims who are still alive, but nothing to the families of the dead. Although this ain't a war-crime, it certainly seems to be a crime against the humans in the Ivory Coast. Perhaps this should count as a crime against humanity.

Me, I'd string these folk up. Should I ever meet someone who works for that company, I'll know where to spit.

£1,000 will buy you what exactly? Even in a third-world country? It won't even buy you the smallest cheapest new car from India. But the dead don't even get the money to bury them. Corporate manslaughter in the first world carries what penalties? Where is the weregild?

I am reminded of the Bhopal disaster.
Bruce, what's your opinion?

Comments

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Unlike your chum, I'm not a Marxist. I was, in my teenage years and early twenties, an Anarcho-Syndicalist with Marxist sympathies.

In fact I'm a Mixed-Economy-Capitalist, and a bourgeois property owner, but above all of these things I am a believer in Justice and Honour, intermingled with a necessary concept of Mercy: which is why I suppose I am sometimes self-contradictory. I don't believe in ideology in any way really: I suppose I believe in the good ol' fashioned case-by-case not-joined-up English way of doing things.

From a philosophical point of view I have found (in my opinion) that all systems are fallible; that all closed systems lead to paradox (including the most rigorous kinds, like formal logic and mathematics) and all propositions or systems that claim universality in application liable to meet with situations with which they cannot deal effectively. (I am prepared to be put right about this.)

IMHO internally consistent political ideologies will always be found wanting. Of course, frameworks of ideas are always required to govern and judge, but there must be room for manoeuvre. No one case is the same as another.

That aside (here comes the contradiction) I think multi-national and supra-national companies should be regulated by international law, with the power to enforce penalties on offenders. However, I would limit the jurisdiction of international business and company law to the more serious cases, rather than defining how curved bananas should be. The International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court could perhaps do with a sibling dealing with this sort of stuff; else the ICC could expand its remit in order to deal with multi-national transgressors. There should be no hiding place for the people who are prepared to willfully ignore the health and welfare of innocent people while they pursue profit: in this sentence the important word is, I feel willfully.

Accidents happen: fines can be paid. Proportionate responses are always best. But thousands of deaths call for a more severe punishment than the one which this company has offered. Trafigura declared profits of $440 million last year on a turnover of $70 billion. I'd sequestrate the whole profit, pushing them into bankruptcy if necessary; and pay the victims and the victims families a proper weregild.

For example, in motorsport in 2007 McLaren paid a $100 million fine to Formula 1's governing body for spying on Ferrari. People's lives, though obviously not worth as much as automotive secrets, should (that awful word) have some value that is enforcable internationally.