Trafigura

History

Trafigura Beheer BV was established as a private group of companies in 1993 by six founding partners: Claude Dauphin, Eric de Turckheim, Graham Sharp, Antonio Cometti, Daniel Posen, and Mark Crandall.

Initially focused on three regional markets – South America (oil and minerals), Eastern Europe (metals), and Africa (oil) – Trafigura has since diversified and expanded globally. In 1999, Trafigura Beheer BV, a unit based in the Netherlands, became the first company to obtain a contract to sell Sudan's oil internationally.

In November 2013, it was announced that the Tory peer and former leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, would be joining Trafigura as a non‑executive director. He had previously stood down from the board of the group’s hedge fund arm following the 2009 controversy over the Côte d'Ivoire incident.

Executive chairman Claude Dauphin, the last remaining founder in an executive position, owned less than 20 per cent of the group’s equity at his death in September 2015, while more than 700 senior managers controlled the rest. Dauphin was succeeded by Jeremy Weir, who, in 2025, will assume the role of Group Chairman, while Richard Holtum will take the helm as CEO from January 2025, according to the company's succession plan. Holtum, a ten‑year veteran of the firm and its global head of gas, power, and renewables, will join Trafigura's board of directors in October 2024.

As of 2015, Trafigura operated in 65 offices across 36 countries. In 2023, revenue was $244.3 billion, net income was $7.4 billion, assets were $90.5 billion, and equity was $16.5 billion. In 2024, the company had around 12,000 employees operating in 150 countries, with 50 offices, and is wholly owned by approximately 1,400 of its employees.

In February 2023, Trafigura reported $577 million in losses from fraudulent shipments it had purchased that were supposed to contain nickel but instead contained much lower‑value materials such as carbon steel. The firm was alerted to possible fraud when cargoes it had purchased, purportedly containing nickel, began taking longer than expected to reach their destinations and were making more port calls than anticipated, while sellers delayed providing 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 stated that it did not believe anyone at the company was complicit in the fraud. The firm initiated legal action against the sellers involved. In January 2026, the London High Court ruled 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". In February 2026, the London High Court increased the damages Gupta must pay to Trafigura to $700 million, plus legal costs.

Investments

In 2003, the group established its fund management subsidiary, Galena Asset Management. In 2010, Trafigura bought 8% of Norilsk Nickel.

In 2007, an explosion in Sløvåg in Gulen Municipality, Sogn og Fjordane county, Norway in a tank owned by the company Vest Tank had severe environmental and health consequences for people living nearby. According to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, Vest Tank was trying to neutralize chemical waste when the explosion occurred, and the owner of the waste was Trafigura, on whose behalf Vest Tank was working. Trafigura was not accused of direct responsibility, and refused requests by the Norwegian police to interview employees.

In February 2013, Trafigura invested $800 million in the Australian energy market, acquiring more than 250 petrol stations, two oil import terminals and five fuel depots in three separate acquisitions by its subsidiary Puma Energy. At the time, there was interest in Australia among energy traders due to a combination of rising demand and the closure of outdated, high-cost refineries. The same month, Trafigura joint venture DT Group partnered with Angola’s state oil firm Sonangol to form a new company, Sonaci DT Pte Ltd, to market Angola’s new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

In March 2013, Trafigura announced a deal with South Sudan to export Dar Blend crude oil from Port Sudan. The agreement with South Sudan was a continuation of Trafigura's longtime presence in the Sudanese oil market and followed the resolution of a legal dispute between Sudan and South Sudan over transit fees and oil revenues.

In October 2013 Trafigura secured USD 1.5 billion in financing for an upfront loan to Russian oil producer OAO Rosneft. The prepayment facility, which provided a loan for advance payment for more than 10 million tons of products over five years, was the largest such deal ever completed by Trafigura. A month later Trafigura signed an agreement with Dallas-based pipeline operator Energy Transfer Partners to transport crude oil and condensate via a partially converted 82-mile pipeline from the Eagle Ford oil field in McMullen County, Texas, to Trafigura’s deep-water terminal at Corpus Christi Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico.

In February 2014, Trafigura signed an agreement to acquire a 30% equity stake in the Jinchuan Group's newly established 400,000 tonnes-per-year copper smelter in Fangchengang, China. In July, Trafigura launched Lykos, an online platform in India to sell metals to small and medium-sized manufacturers in the country. In September, Trafigura completed the $860 million sale of an 80% stake in a Corpus Christi Texas oil storage terminal to Buckeye Partners LP.

Bond issuances and reported earnings

In 2008, the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit. In March 2010, Trafigura made its first venture into capital markets, issuing Euro 400m ($539m) in five-year Eurobonds. The following month Trafigura listed its first perpetual subordinated bond on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) at a fixed rate of 7.625%. The issuance raised $500m in long-term capital that is treated as equity by international accounting rules, leaving existing shareholders undiluted. By 2011, its revenue had increased to $121.5 billion and its profits to $1.11 billion, with profits falling 11% in 2012. In 2013, as a consequence of the Singapore listing, Trafigura released financial statements for the first time, reporting Q1 profits of $216.1 million – up 3.2 per cent on the previous year. Revenue grew 7.9 per cent to USD 31.2 billion. In March 2016, Trafigura closed a 46 million yen ($413 million) three-year loan, doubling the size of its 2014 Samurai loan.

Activities

In 2024, Trafigura operated in 150 countries and had 50 offices. Trafigura is the third‑largest physical commodities trading group in the world, behind Vitol and Glencore. Trafigura sources, stores, blends, and transports raw materials including oil, refined petroleum products, non‑ferrous metals, iron ore, and coal. It more recently added a third division, focused on gas, power, and renewables.

Trade in non‑ferrous and bulk commodities – mainly copper, lead, and zinc concentrate, alumina, refined metals (copper, lead, zinc, and aluminium), as well as the iron ore and coal trading books – made up 13% of Trafigura's overall trading turnover in 2016. The group traded 8.2 million tonnes of non‑ferrous metal concentrates and 6.6 million tonnes of non‑ferrous refined metal during the year. Overall volume across metals and minerals increased by 13% from 2015 to 59 million tonnes.

Trading volumes in oil and petroleum products totalled 4.3 million barrels per day in 2016, up 42% from 3 million barrels per day in 2015. In October 2016, Trafigura sold five medium‑range tankers to China's Bank of Communications Financial Leasing Co, marking its exit from owning product tankers. In support of its arbitrage‑based business model, Trafigura ensures a degree of control over supply, storage, and logistics through industrial subsidiaries, including the oil storage and distribution business Puma Energy, in which Trafigura holds a 49% interest. Trafigura is involved in paper trading through its subsidiary Galena Asset Management, which was set up in 2003 to invest in commodity funds.

The company was named in the Iraq Oil‑for‑Food scandal in connection with a Liberian‑registered turbine tanker, the Essex, which had UN approval to load Iraqi crude at Iraq's main export terminal at Mina al‑Bakr. The tanker was chartered by Trafigura Beheer BV. According to its captain, Theofanis Chiladakis, the Essex was 'topped off' at least twice, with a total of 272,000 barrels of crude, after UN monitors had signed off on the cargo. This occurred on 13 May and 27 August 2001. Elf Aquitaine employees had first discussed this scheme in February 1998.

In February 2013, Trafigura Maritime Ventures Limited – the Malta‑based subsidiary of Trafigura Maritime Logistics PTE Limited (based in Singapore) – and the oil trading arm of Total became involved in an oil price fixing controversy that led both to be barred from the tendering process at the Enemalta oil purchasing board. Between 1999 and 2012, Enemalta paid the two companies $3.2 billion for oil, accounting for 70% of the oil purchased by Enemalta during that period.

Waste dumping in Ivory Coast

The 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump was a health crisis in Ivory Coast in which the Probo Koala, a ship registered in Panama and chartered by Trafigura, hired a local contractor to offload waste in Abidjan after refusing to pay a €1,000 per cubic metre surcharge imposed by Amsterdam Port Services to discourage waste disposal in the Netherlands. The local contractor, Tommy, improperly dumped the waste materials at as many as twelve sites in and around the city of Abidjan in August 2006. The gas released by these chemicals is blamed by the UN and the government of Ivory Coast for the deaths of 17 people and the injury of over 30,000 Ivorians, with injuries ranging from mild headaches to severe burns of the skin and lungs. Almost 100,000 Ivorians sought medical attention after Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny offered free medical care in Abidjan's hospitals to the city's residents.

Trafigura maintains that the substance dumped consisted of 'slops', or waste water from washing the Probo Koala's tanks. An inquiry in the Netherlands in late 2006 confirmed that the substance consisted of more than 500 tonnes of a mixture of fuel, hydrogen sulfide, and sodium hydroxide. After the start of the health crisis in Abidjan, the Probo Koala arrived at the port of Paldiski in Estonia, where Trafigura permitted Dutch police to board the vessel to conduct an investigation.

Trafigura denied that any waste was transported from the Netherlands, stating that the substances contained only tiny amounts of hydrogen sulfide, and that the company did not know the substance was to be disposed of improperly. Trafigura officials, including Claude Dauphin and the company's West Africa regional director, travelled to Abidjan to assist in the cleanup effort but were arrested and imprisoned by the Ivorian government. While its executives were being held, the company agreed to pay US$198 million to the Ivorian government for the cleanup without admitting wrongdoing, and the Ivorian government pledged not to prosecute the company. Dauphin and his fellow executives were released following the settlement.

In 2008, a civil lawsuit in London was launched by almost 30,000 Ivorians against Trafigura. In May 2009, Trafigura announced that it would sue the BBC for libel after its Newsnight programme alleged that the company had knowingly sought to cover up its role in the incident. In September 2009, The Guardian obtained and published internal Trafigura emails showing that the traders responsible knew how dangerous the chemicals were. Shortly afterwards, Trafigura agreed to a settlement of £30 million to settle the suit. In 2010, a Dutch court found Trafigura guilty of illegally exporting toxic waste from Amsterdam. On 16 June 2016, the law firm Leigh Day, which had represented the Ivorian claimants, was found to have breached a contract and its duty of care after £6 million of the 2009 settlement funds were embezzled by a third‑party organisation, which had made a fraudulent claim against the funds.

Bribery

Angola

In December 2023, Trafigura and its former chief operating officer, Mike Wainwright, were accused by Swiss investigators of arranging €4.3 million in bribes to an Angolan government official representing a subsidiary of Sonagol, Angola's state oil company, between 2009 and 2011. Prosecutors alleged that the funds were related to Trafigura's activities in Angola's petroleum industry, and that the government official favoured Trafigura in shipping contracts, which resulted in $151 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' imprisonment, 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 compensation. In late 2025, Trafigura appealed the Swiss court's decision, which under Swiss law is not yet legally binding during the appeals process.

Brazil

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.

Corporate structure

Some of Trafigura's major international units include:

Trafigura Beheer BV, based in the Netherlands.

Impala Group of Companies, which operates the group's worldwide oil storage and distribution assets and investments, has been a wholly owned subsidiary since 2001.

Puma Energy, which operates in more than 20 countries, mainly in Central America and Africa, and supplies a network of just over 600 service stations. On 7 May 2012, Puma agreed to buy out the key shareholders in KenolKobil, the largest independent oil marketing company in East and Central Africa, which could have added 400 stations to its network. However, Puma Energy later terminated its bid to acquire the oil marketer.

EMINCAR, based in Havana until 2010, dedicated to consulting and mineral logistics administration.

Galena Asset Management, based in Switzerland, is the subsidiary through which Trafigura has established and manages a fund management business. Lord Strathclyde is a non‑executive director on the board.