The case of Trafigura, the Dutch registered oil trading company, with a London office, which agreed at the end of last month to pay millions of pounds compensation to 31,000 people affected by toxic waste dumped in the Ivory Coast, can be highlighted as revealing many different things:

• the benevolent action of a firm caught up in an environmental disaster caused by a contractor through no fault of the company.
• the 'strangling' of public debate by a firm committed to defending its credibility.
• the triumph of investigative journalism in an ongoing battle against corporate irresponsibility.
• the importance of ICT in exposing cases such as these to wide public debate through social networking.

The facts of the case are clear: Trafigura bought a consignment of 'dirty' petrol at a considerable discount, which it re-processed using a method banned in most developed countries. Internal emails show how the firm hired a rundown tanker to treat the waste produced by this re-processing. They then found a contractor in the Ivory Coast who agreed to take the waste and dump it at landfill sites around Abidjan, the country's capital city.

What happened next is either an unfortunate, but low-scale polluting incident, caused by the contractor used by Trafigura, or a heinous case of toxic waste dumping, entirely due to the oil trader's desire for profit whatever the human and environmental cost. Tens of thousands of people went to hospital shortly after the waste was dumped; an unknown number may have died.

Despite Trafigura's lawyers' attempts to stifle reporting of the case, details of the case spread through the blogosphere, as well as through mainstream news gathering organisations. Today, news emerged that the firm's lawyers, Carter-Ruck, had taken action preventing The Guardian newspaper reporting that questions had been asked in parliament about the existence of a 'gagging' injunction. The lifting of this ban has eased calls for protests by free speech activists against Trafigura and its lawyers.

Greenpeace and Amnesty International are now calling for Trafigura to be prosecuted through the Dutch legal system, as the case gathers pace towards its conclusion. For the thousands of people affected this may come as little comfort, as they deal with the after-effects of the poisoning.

As well as the multi-million pound payoff, the settlement includes the acceptance that Trafigura makes 'no admission of liability'. An interesting ethical viewpoint to debate...