Amsterdam, The Netherlands - The company that unloaded chemical waste blamed for the deaths of 10 people in Ivory Coast has said it accepts moral, but not legal, responsibility for the incident, Dutch media reported on Wednesday.
The Dutch state broadcaster NOS cited Eric de Turckheim, co-founder of the commodities broker Trafigura Beheer BV, as speaking at a press conference in London.
Officials for Trafigura in London and at its headquarters in Amstelveen, Netherlands, could not be reached late on Wednesday to confirm the NOS report.
Trafigura says it contracted properly with an Ivory Coast company called Tommy to dispose of the waste that was found dumped in residential neighbourhoods of Abidjan in the weeks after August 19.
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It stank terribly and caused nearly 100 000 people to seek treatment in local hospitals. A French company is still working to clean up the mess.
Trafigura says the waste it offloaded from the ship the Probo Koala contained no hydrogen sulfide, but a United Nations analysis of the waste material found on the ground in Abidjan contained toxic levels of the chemical.
According to the NOS report on Wednesday, De Turckheim said the Probo Koala had been used as a sort of floating gasoline refinery.
But he repeated that as far as Trafigura was aware, the waste contained only caustic soda used to scrub the ship's tanks and petrochemical residue.
Ivory Coast's government resigned over its role in the affair, though most ministers were re-appointed within several weeks.
Tommy's manager and several customs workers were jailed in Ivory Coast last month on suspicion of breaking toxic waste laws, along with Trafigura's director Claude Dauphin and its West Africa manager Jean-Pierre Valentini, who had travelled to the country to assist authorities with the clean-up effort. - Sapa-AP
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