AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (AP/AFP) – Greenpeace said yesterday it has uncovered new evidence linking a major oil trading company to toxic waste that killed 15 people in Ivory Coast in 2006, and asked Dutch prosecutors to reconsider charging executives with illegal dumping.

The environmental group said it had obtained internal e-mails and other documents that show Trafigura Beheer BV executives were aware the sludge that the ship Probo Koala brought to Ivory Coast was hazardous.

The sludge was dumped in several places in Abidjan by a local subcontractor, and was blamed for killing 15 people and sickening 100,000 more.

Trafigura’s managers “knew they were violating the rules by exporting toxic waste from Europe, and it was deliberately taken to Africa to dispose of there because it was cheaper”, said Greenpeace spokesman Andre van der Vlugt. “They knew what risk they were taking, and then they prepared a false invoice after the ship left” in order to cover their tracks, he said.

Van der Vlugt declined to say how his organisation obtained the documents or verified their authenticity. They have been published on the website of the Guardian newspaper.

Trafigura, which is registered in the Netherlands, did not deny the authenticity of the e-mails, but said they don’t show the company did anything wrong.

“It is important to place the internal Trafigura staff e-mails published in the UK press in their proper context,” the company said in an e-mailed response to questions. “A number of the e-mails display what is simply ‘trader talk’. The suggestions apparently contained in some of these e-mails were never seriously considered.”

The company has never acknowledged any wrongdoing in the case, and repeated yesterday that the waste it offloaded “could not possibly have caused deaths and serious or long-term injuries”.

But the UN’s top expert on toxic waste, Okechukwu Ibeanu, contradicted that.

“On face value it is clear that there is a direct and indirect connection” between the dumping of the waste and the deaths and illnesses, he told a news conference in Geneva yesterday.

“It could not have been a coincidence that thousands of people in the immediate aftermath of this event showed consistent symptoms,” he said. “It is difficult not to conclude that there was a connection. Residents in areas close to the dumping sites were directly exposed to the waste through skin contact and breathing of the volatile substances.

“In addition, secondary exposure reportedly occurred through contact with surface water, groundwater and eventually through consumption of foods grown or extracted from contaminated land and water.”

Trafigura paid Ivory Coast’s Government euro152 million (US$197 million) in 2007 to assist in cleaning up the waste without admitting responsibility.

On Wednesday, the company said it plans to settle separately with 30,000 victims.

Before the ship and its toxic cargo headed for Abidjan, an attempt to unload the Probo Koala was stopped halfway through in Amsterdam.

The waste was pumped back into the ship by waste disposal company APS after APS claimed the waste was more toxic than expected and quoted a higher price for its disposal.

Prosecution spokeswoman Esther Scheur said the company and several employees remain under investigation in the Netherlands for illegally exporting the hazardous waste, but any charges for the dumping and its effects would fall under the jurisdiction of Ivory Coast.

Scheur said prosecutors had initially included Trafigura co-founder Claude Dauphin in their ongoing illegal export case, but district and appeals courts had both ruled there was insufficient evidence against him to proceed.

Trafigura came to the attention of Jamaicans in 2006 when the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party revealed that the firm, which traded oil for Jamaica on the international market, had donated $31 million to an account operated by then ruling People’s National Party (PNP) general secretary Colin Campbell.

The money was transferred to the account just prior to the PNP’s annual conference that year.

Trafigura Beheer said the money was part of a commercial agreement, while the PNP maintained that it was a donation to the party.

“They made the offer. They said that they know elections are imminent in Jamaica and they are intending to make a contribution,” Campbell told journalists at a news conference in October 2006 at the PNP headquarters. “I don’t know if it is for both political parties, but they spoke to me as the general secretary of the People’s National Party.”

The ensuing scandal from the transaction damaged the PNP and Campbell resigned as PNP general secretary and from the Cabinet. A few days later, PNP president and then prime minister Portia Simpson Miller ordered the money sent back.

Just over a year later, in November 2007, Prime Minister Bruce Golding told Parliament that the Dutch police believe Trafigura Beheer had bribed Jamaican public officials in 2006.

On November 20, 2007, the Parliament passed a resolution giving the Dutch investigators permission to come to Jamaica to probe the donation to the PNP.

– Additional reporting by the Observer