Talk:Trafigura

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Edit request

Hi, I work for Trafigura, and my COI declaration is at the top of this page.

There are many redundancies, plus a number of uncited statements, in the sections of this article that are below the "Waste dumping in Ivory Coast" section. I would like to request that those issues be corrected, and I have included sample replacement texts below, cited to the reliable independent sources already in use.

1. Information about Mongolia

Problem: There is information in the section titled "Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials" which is about Mongolia rather than Angola and which is redundant to information already in the "History" section.

Solution: Remove the Mongolian information from "Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials", and add any valid well-cited information from that removal to the existing text in the "History" section.

I have rewritten a combination of both sets of text (from the "History" section and the "Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials" section), and cited it to the reliable sources already in the article. I also added a paragraph about nickel-fraud, since that is mentioned but not explained in the current Mongolia text in the "Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials" section.

Rewrite:

In February 2023, Trafigura reported $577 million in losses from fraudulent shipments it purchased that were supposed to contain nickel but contained much lower-value materials such as carbon steel instead. The firm was alerted to possible fraud when cargoes it had purchased purportedly containing nickel were taking longer to arrive at their destination than expected and were stopping off at more ports en route than expected, and sellers stalled on showing documentation. In December 2022, Trafigura investigators inspected purported nickel shipments in Rotterdam, and discovered the fraud. The group's head of nickel and cobalt trading, Socrates Economou, left the company, but Trafigura said it did not believe that anyone at the company was complicit in the fraud. The firm initiated legal action against the sellers involved.

In October 2024, the company reported that individuals in its Mongolian petroleum products supply business had, over a five year period, concealed overdue debts and manipulated data, resulting in inflated sums being paid by Trafiura. Local regulations require international fuel supplier deliveries to stop at the border, necessitating local operatives for deliveries to the domestic market. The company recorded a writedown of $1.1 billion resulting from the misconduct by staff in its Mongolian office. Banks asked Trafigura to include an explanation of events in Mongolia and its remediation plan in the presentation for its European revolving credit facility to be launched in early 2025. Trafigura said it discovered the problems in Mongolia via the compliance overhaul and tighter risk controls it undertook as a result of the nickel fraud it had been the victim of in 2023.

Request (Mongolia)

1a. Please replace the current paragraph about Mongolia in the History section ("In October 2024, the company reported that individuals in its Mongolian ...") with the two paragraphs above labeled "Rewrite". (My paragraph on nickel-fraud loss can be trimmed a bit if desired; I tried to include all relevant facts from the news reports that covered it, the most thorough of which was the cited WSJ article.)

1b. Please then remove the redundant text about Mongolia in the Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials section. The text to remove begins "As of December 2024, Trafigura, is facing increased scrutiny ...." and ends "due to tighter risk controls implemented after the nickel fraud."

2. Information about Angola

The section titled "Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials" contains further redundant information, and the text about Angola is a bit garbled.

I have rewritten the text, using the existing citations, for clarity and accuracy, and added the current disposition of the case, cited to Bloomberg News.

Rewrite

In December 2023, Trafigura and its former chief operating officer Mike Wainwright were accused by Swiss investigators of arranging €4.3 million of bribes to an Angolan government official between 2009 and 2011. Prosecutors alleged that the funds were in relation to Trafigura's activities in Angola's petroleum industry, and that the government official favored Trafigura in shipping contracts which resulted in an alleged $143.7 million in profits for the company. In January 2025, the Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland convicted Wainwright and Trafigura on bribery charges; Wainwright was sentenced to 32 months in jail of which 20 months were suspended, and Trafigura was found guilty of not having sufficient systems in place to prevent bribery and was ordered to pay a $3.3 million fine plus $145.6 million in a compensation claim.

Request (Angola)

2a. Please remove as redundant the following text from the section titled Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials:

"Trafigura is also dealing with other legal and regulatory challenges. It reached a $127 million settlement with the US Justice Department in March, pleading guilty to a bribery scheme in Brazil. In May, it agreed to a $55 million settlement with US regulators over fraud and market manipulation charges. As the company prepares for a leadership transition, with Richard Holtum taking over as CEO on January 1, 2025, and Jeremy Weir becoming chairman, Trafigura faces the challenge of rebuilding trust and ensuring that its new compliance measures are sufficient to prevent future losses."

Reason: The text on Brazil is redundant to text already in the Activities section ("In March 2024, Trafigura agreed to plead guilty ...") and the Brazil Bribery Case section. The text on Richard Holtum is redundant to the History section and is an unnecessary editorialization.

2b. Please replace the text about Angola with my copyedited and updated rewrite above, and move the text to the Activities section (the appropriate chronological placement would be after the paragraph that begins "In April 2023, ..."), and remove the header "Alleged bribery of Angolan government officials".

Thank you very much for your time. Please let me know if there are any questions or concerns. M.from.Traf (talk) 02:37, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Hi. That's a meaty request. I can try to look into it over the coming days and provide some feedback. PK650 (talk) 04:24, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

I've now gone ahead with #1. The two paragraphs were unreferenced in any case. #2 will be considered shortly. PK650 (talk) 05:01, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

1. 2 was just implemented. I read the source articles and think the paragraph fairly accurately represents what they state. I kept the subsidiary information as I thought it was still relevant. PK650 (talk) 08:36, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Done PK650 (talk) 08:37, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Edit request 2

Hi, as above, I work for Trafigura, and my COI declaration is at the top of this page.

I would like to request that the conclusion to the nickel-fraud case be added to that paragraph, which is paragraph six of the History section (beginning "In February 2023"). Could these two sentences please be appended to that paragraph?

Regarding the fake nickel cargoes and the businessmen perpetrating them, the London High Court ruled in January 2026 that "Trafigura was the victim of fraud on a grand scale devised and implemented by Prateek Gupta using the Corporate Defendants", and awarded Trafigura $500 million in relief plus substantial damages. The judge also ruled that the former Trafigura employees who had been embroiled in the case, Sokratis Oikonomou and Harshdeep Bhatia, were "wholly innocent of any wrongdoing".

Thank you very much for your time and assistance. M.from.Traf (talk) 01:25, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Done Likeanechointheforest (talk) 18:30, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Another edit request

Hi, as above, I work for Trafigura, and my COI declaration is at the top of this page. I'd like to request that the following cited updates be reviewed and implemented if they meet Wikipedia guidelines.

1. Please add the following update to the end of the nickel fraud paragraph (paragraph six in the History section, which begins "In February 2023"):

In February 2026 the London High Court raised the damages Gupta must pay to Trafigura to $700 million, plus legal costs.

2. Please add the following update to the end of the Angola paragraph in the Bribery section:

In late 2025, Trafigura appealed the Swiss court's decision, which under Swiss law is not yet legally binding during the appeals process.

Thank you very much for your time and assistance. M.from.Traf (talk) 02:10, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Reply 10-JUN-2026

  Edit request implemented    Spintendo  11:10, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Edit request: Remove remaining redundancy

Hi, as above, I work for Trafigura, and my COI declaration is at the top of this page.

Last year you assisted in removing multiple redundancies in this article. I'd like help to finish up that endeavor.

There are redundancies in the article about the Brazil bribery case. Text in the Activities section duplicates the information in the Brazil subsection of the Bribery section. I would like to request that the two Brazil-related paragraphs in the "Activities" section be removed from that section and merged/consolidated with the information in the "Brazil" subsection of the "Bribery" section.

Below (at the bottom) I have composed a proposed new merged/consolidated text, which incorporates the redundant information from the Activities section, to replace the existing text of the Brazil subsection of the Bribery section.

Request: Please remove (delete) the following two paragraphs from the Activities section:

Extended content

In November 2018, Global Witness asked the UK's Serious Fraud Office and the US authorities to investigate alleged ties between the Brazilian Operation Car Wash scandal and three oil trading companies, one of which was Trafigura. Trafigura stated that it was keeping the allegations "under review" and affirmed that it was "taking the allegations ... seriously", but denied that its management knew that payments would be used to make improper payments to employees of Petrobras.

Some 18 months later, in May 2020, the Guardian reported that Trafigura was under investigation by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for alleged corruption and market manipulation relating to oil trading. Subpoenas demanded information going back at least four years relating to "manipulation and corruption involving oil products and trading". It was unclear whether the CFTC investigation was related to Operation Car Wash. In March 2024, Trafigura agreed to plead guilty and pay a fine of approximately $127 million to resolve charges of bribery of government officials in Brazil by former employees or agents during previous decades, following a series of DOJ probes into oil industry practices.

and replace the current text in the Brazil subsection of the Bribery section

Extended content

On 28 March 2024, Trafigura pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the anti‑bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with bribes paid to Brazilian officials. The company agreed to pay approximately $127 million to settle the US Department of Justice investigation. The bribery scheme operated between 2003 and 2014, during which Trafigura paid bribes to Petrobras officials to secure and maintain contracts. The illicit payments amounted to up to 20 cents per barrel of oil products bought from or sold to Petrobras. These bribes were concealed using shell companies and intermediaries with offshore bank accounts.

Trafigura's involvement in this case is connected to Brazil's largest political corruption scandal, known as 'Operation Car Wash' or 'Lava Jato'. This is the first time Trafigura has admitted to being involved in the Car Wash scandal, although its rivals Glencore and Vitol had previously admitted to bribery in relation to the same scandal.

Settlement details

The settlement includes:

• a criminal fine of approximately $80.5 million;
• forfeiture of $46.5 million in proceeds derived from the conspiracy; and
• credit of up to $26.8 million for amounts paid to resolve a related Brazilian investigation.

As part of the agreement, Trafigura is required to submit annual reports on its remediation efforts and the implementation of compliance measures, and to participate in quarterly meetings with the DOJ over a three‑year period.

with the merged/consolidated text below. I have (1) retained all existing citations; (2) removed redundancies; (3) made a few small copyedits, per the citations, for clarity or where the existing text was ambiguous; (4) used only the existing citations; (5) added existing citations to nine previously uncited sentences; and (6) reformatted the bulleted list into standard text.

In November 2018, Global Witness asked the UK's Serious Fraud Office and the US authorities to investigate alleged ties between the Brazilian Operation Car Wash scandal and three oil trading companies, one of which was Trafigura. Trafigura stated that it was keeping the allegations "under review" and affirmed that it was "taking the allegations ... seriously", but denied that its management knew that payments would be used to make improper payments to employees of Petrobras. In May 2020, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) investigated Trafigura for alleged corruption and market manipulation relating to oil trading. Subpoenas demanded information going back at least four years relating to "manipulation and corruption involving oil products and trading".

In March 2024, Trafigura pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the anti‑bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with bribes paid to Brazilian officials. The company agreed to pay approximately $127 million to settle the US Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation. The bribery scheme operated between 2003 and 2014, during which Trafigura paid bribes of up to 20 cents per barrel of oil products to Petrobras officials to secure and maintain contracts for sales and purchases. These bribes were concealed using shell companies and intermediaries with offshore bank accounts. The settlement to the DOJ included a criminal fine of approximately $80.5 million and a forfeiture of $46.5 million in proceeds derived from the conspiracy. The DOJ agreed to credit Trafigura up to approximately $26.8 million of the criminal fine for amounts that the company pays to resolve a Brazilian investigation into related conduct. As part of the agreement, Trafigura is required to submit annual reports on its remediation efforts and the implementation of compliance measures, and to participate in quarterly meetings with the DOJ on remediation over a three‑year period.

Thank you very much for your time. Please let me know if there are any questions or concerns. M.from.Traf (talk) 20:03, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

I see the text from the Activities section, but curiously I don't see the text from the Brazil section. It is merely underlined here on the talk page as replace the current text in the Brazil subsection of the Bribery section. We need that text from this section included with your request Please advise.

References

Regards,  Spintendo  18:27, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi Spintendo, thank you for your response and your posting of the guideline instructions. I have now added the specific text to be replaced (in a collapsed box above) to my request post. Thanks again, and let me know if there are any further concerns or questions. M.from.Traf (talk) 20:53, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi Spintendo, I have reopened this edit request since I have fulfilled your instructions above. I hope that you can now review it. Thank you, and let me know if there are any further concerns or questions. M.from.Traf (talk) 20:24, 15 July 2026 (UTC)