Trafigura is going back before judges to ask for high court records to be sealed. Photograph: Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images
Trafigura, the offshore oil trader that became notorious for legal attempts to suppress reporting of parliament, is going back to Britain's judges tomorrow.
The privately owned oil giant wants high court records to be sealed to prevent the public and the media from reading allegations made in a separate lawsuit.
The move marks a new frontier in Trafigura's use of UK media laws to avoid unwelcome publicity. Last year, the firm deployed an array of libel proceedings, confidence injunctions and threats of contempt of court to try to avert criticism over its toxic waste, dumped cheaply in west Africa, where it made thousands ill.
Trafigura's moves led to uproar when it obtained a so-called super-injunction that it claimed banned parliamentary reporting, which was subsequently criticised by the lord chief justice, Lord Judge.
Kieran Looney, an Irish management consultant, is suing Trafigura for £6m in a separate dispute over fees for a consultancy project. Trafigura denies the claim and is defending the case.
Looney's claim, set out in a public document drawn up by Matthew Collings QC and filed at the high court on 17 December, says Trafigura's rapid recent worldwide expansion led to fears the firm was becoming too bureaucratic and inflexible.
The claim says Looney was hired to rectify management problems and mistakes at a fee of £3m a year for three years. It goes on to detail meetings with senior executives in London and Geneva, and internal Trafigura emails.
The Guardian understands that back-office functions studied by Looney included a "special project" to open 200 petrol stations in Angola in a joint deal with the state oil company, Sonangol, and global tax schemes organised from the Netherlands, where Trafigura registers its holding company.
The question of whether it pays its fair share of tax is a particularly sensitive issue for an offshore multinational such as Trafigura. Separate internal Trafigura documents seen by the Guardian say that the company normally succeeds in paying a total of less than 15% tax on its worldwide profits. This is half the official headline rate of corporation tax in the UK and US, and much less than the 25% Dutch rate.
Trafigura's global profits were $478m in its last year of published accounts. The firm runs many worldwide operations from a London headquarters in Oxford Street, but says it generates only a fraction – about 8% – of its profits in the UK, on which it paid UK tax of less than $12m (£7.5m) last year.
Trafigura's parent company Farringford NV is based in the Caribbean tax haven of Curaçao. Many operations are registered in low-tax cantons of Switzerland. Trafigura documents detail the firm's discussions about whether to "migrate" to Switzerland for tax purposes its interests in a Peruvian mine currently held by Iberian, a Canadian company. Internal estimates show this could save $3m tax in a single year.
A high court hearing is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon in the Looney case before a preliminary judge, Master Moncaster. An application is expected to seal the court papers, although they have previously been publicly available. Current UK law allows a judge to order suppression without giving reasons.
Trafigura did not wish to comment today.
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