Twenty years ago, on the night of August 19 to 20, 2006, Ivory Coast lived through one of the worst environmental and public health disasters in its history. Two decades later, despite legal proceedings launched across four continents, the vast majority of victims still have not received compensation, and Trafigura’s leadership has never been held criminally accountable for what happened in Ivory Coast.
The disaster began with the Probo Koala, an oil tanker chartered by the commodity trading firm Trafigura, then based across the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The vessel was carrying hundreds of tons of petrochemical waste generated by an onboard refining operation. After being turned away from the port of Amsterdam, where Dutch authorities deemed the cost of proper disposal too high, the ship eventually docked in Abidjan.
There, a newly formed local company, Compagnie Tommy, was hired to offload the waste. Lacking any real expertise or capacity to treat it, the company subcontracted the job to truck drivers who dumped 528 cubic meters of highly toxic residue in open sites across the city, including the Akouédo public landfill and roughly ten other densely populated areas.
Within a day, a foul stench had spread across Abidjan. Residents reported headaches, nausea, vomiting, eye and throat irritation, skin burns and breathing difficulties. Official figures eventually confirmed at least 17 deaths from toxic gas inhalation and more than 100,000 people seeking medical treatment. Organizations including Amnesty International and Greenpeace cited similar numbers, while victims’ associations put the total number affected even higher.
The scandal triggered a cascade of legal proceedings in multiple countries, none of which ever managed to establish Trafigura’s criminal liability for what happened on Ivorian soil. In Ivory Coast, a trial held in 2008 convicted only local Compagnie Tommy officials, its director general received a twenty year prison sentence and a port shipping agent received five years, while Trafigura itself faced no criminal consequences. Around the same time, the company reached an out of court settlement with the Ivorian state, agreeing to pay 100 billion CFA francs in exchange for the state dropping its own legal action.
In the United Kingdom, a class action brought by law firm Leigh Day on behalf of nearly 30,000 victims never went to trial. A confidential settlement with Trafigura resulted in roughly 33 million euros being allocated to claimants, but more than 6 million euros meant for victims disappeared along the way after the firm overseeing distribution routed the funds through an unreliable Ivorian intermediary who diverted part of the money.
In the Netherlands, courts declined to extend proceedings initiated by Greenpeace to cover the events in Ivory Coast, citing a lack of cooperation from Ivorian authorities.
More recently, a new legal effort has opened in Switzerland, where Trafigura is now headquartered. Represented by Ivory Coast’s National Coordination of Toxic Waste Victims, more than 87,000 victims are seeking 30,000 Swiss francs each, roughly 20 million CFA francs, before a Geneva court. The case remains pending.
Marking the twentieth anniversary this year, a group of United Nations experts issued a blunt assessment in July 2026, stating that thousands of victims are still seeking justice, accountability and effective remedies for the human rights violations they suffered two decades ago. They described the case as a stark example of hazardous waste being shipped to the developing world, calling it flagrant environmental racism. The experts also noted that Trafigura executives, including former CEO Claude Dauphin, who has since died, avoided criminal liability through a series of financial settlements, leaving most victims uncompensated or paid only token amounts relative to the harm suffered.
For residents of Abidjan affected by the dumping, time has done little to erase the consequences. Many still live with permanent disabilities linked to their exposure to the toxic substances, while others lost family members in the days that followed. Attempts by victims to organize have repeatedly met resistance from authorities, with several demonstrations demanding compensation broken up by Ivorian security forces in recent years, including outside the United States embassy in Abidjan. Victims’ groups accuse the Ivorian state of ongoing inaction and point to funds meant for compensation that have gone missing.
Twenty years on, the Probo Koala affair stands as one of the starkest symbols of the impunity multinational companies can enjoy in the face of environmental disasters they cause in the Global South. Trafigura continues operating worldwide, while in Abidjan, part of the population still lives with the consequences of a disaster that multiple reports, including one from the International Federation for Human Rights, describe as largely preventable.