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A COURT in the Netherlands has found the oil trader Trafigura guilty of exporting toxic waste, and fined it €1m ($1.3m) following a seven-week trial.

Presiding judge Frans Bauduin found the company guilty of exporting waste to the Third World and harming the environment. Sergiy Chertov, the captain of the tanker Probo Koala, which had been chartered by Trafigura, received a five-year suspended jail term, while Trafigura employee Naeem Ahmed was fined €25,000.

The charges relate to an incident in 2006 where Trafigura had acquired quantities of sulphur-laden oil and used the tanker as a floating reactor vessel to remove the sulphur through a crude caustic washing process. The process produced highly sulphurous and toxic waste, which Trafigura had briefly unloaded at Amsterdam port with a view to having it treated.

After Trafigura failed to come to an agreement with the local contractor, the waste was returned to the Probo Koala and ultimately shipped to the Ivory Coast, where its unsafe disposal is alleged to have resulted in the deaths of 17 people. Trafigura denies that its waste could have caused any serious illness.