ABSTRACT
This chapter uses Cohen's three forms of state crime denial to assist in understanding the criminal nature of the events and relationships associated with Trafigura's dumping. The three forms of denial are: 'denial of the past', 'literal denial', and 'implicatory denial'. It is argued that each of these categorisations can assist in unravelling the tactics employed by Trafigura in what can be understood as an elaborate cover-up of the dumping. The super-injunction was a turning point in the struggle over corporate censure and was ultimately unsuccessful as a tactic of denial. The chapter analyses the reaction of international civil society actors to the dumping and aims to assess the capacity of these actors to label the corporation as criminal and to sanction the state-corporate crime that took place in Abidjan. It examines two events: first, the attempt by mainstream British media to censure Trafigura for the dumping, and second, a 30,000-claimant personal injury case filed against the corporation in London.
