Following Roman Polanski’s detention in Switzerland for the foible of fleeing detention in relation to the statutory and forcible rape of a 13 year old girl, reports stated that he had travelled outside France on the advice of his lawyers who concluded US authorities no longer were actively seeking his arrest.
Well, as massive fails go, that surely ranks with the clusterfuck, as Mr Eugenides delicately puts it, unleashed following attempts to gag The Guardian in reporting responses to a proposed Parliamentary question. Guido Fawkes (and you have no idea how much it pains me to credit him) had checked the Commons order paper, and wondered if it related to one scheduled by Paul Farrelly, Labour MP for Newcastle-Under-Lyme:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.
Well, if readers had not heard of Trafigura, the oil-trading company based in Switzerland, and the allegations that it had dumped toxic materials in Côte d’Ivoire, to the life-ending detriment of many… they do now. And, as Carter-Ruck have apparently withdrawn opposition to the reporting of whatever question which was to be asked, many more will know about it.
Some may even get to hear about the Vest Tank explosion at Gulen in Sogn of Fjordane, Norway on 24 May 2007 in which the company Vest Tank, acting on behalf of Trafigura, was attempting to neutralize the same type of toxic waste as allegedly dumped in Côte d’Ivoire.
Well done, Carter-Ruck. Still, next time follow the lead of Schillings’ when they represented the Mr Creosote of Russian football mangerism, Alisher Usmanov. (Photograph hat-tip – Ole Ole.)
