A report commissioned for the oil trading firm Trafigura stating that tonnes of dumped waste could have caused an outbreak of illness in West Africa can be revealed for the first time after an injunction was lifted.

Until last night the press was prevented from publishing details of the report under a “super injunction”, placed by Trafigura’s lawyers Carter-Ruck, provoking a row in Westminster over freedom of speech.

The Minton Report was commissioned by Trafigura in 2006, weeks after 500 tonnes of hazardous waste from a ship, the Probo Koala, was allegedly dumped in Ivory Coast. It said that Trafigura’s oil waste was potentially highly toxic and “capable of causing severe human health effects”, including death.

Last night Pierre Lorinet, the company’s chief financial officer, told The Daily Telegraph: “Effectively, that report was a draft report, a work in progress ... an analysis of possibles.

“Because we have been the recipient of quite a lot of inaccurate reporting, we decided that our best course of action at the time was to get the injunction. Is it a heavy-handed approach? Absolutely. The injunction was never intended to gag Parliament or attack free speech.”

The Probo Koala was told that the original intention of disposing of the waste — a by-product of cleaning coker gasoline — in the Netherlands would be too expensive. It was instead shipped to Ivory Coast, where it was allegedly dumped by local contractors in 18 locations around the capital.

Trafigura has repeatedly claimed that the waste had been handled properly and was harmless.

In the days afterwards residents of Abidjan reported vomiting, burns, inflammation of the eyes, respiratory problems, diarrhoea and nausea. Although Trafigura denied any deaths, the UN estimated that 108,000 fell ill, 69 had hospital treatment and 15 died.

Last month the company offered £950 to each of the 31,000 people affected without accepting liability.

In a statement last night, the report’s author, Lord Minton, said: “Any suggestion that the draft September 2006 report was anything other than an initial desktop study — which remained in draft and which was quickly superseded when we were first provided with reliable facts — would be wholly incorrect.”

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