New Delhi – Nearly three years after poisonous gases from a Union Carbide Corporation’s (UCC) manufacturing unit killed an estimated 15,000 folks and left greater than half one million severely in poor health within the Indian metropolis of Bhopal, a chemical buying and selling agency – Visa Petrochemicals Private Limited – was included in Mumbai.

Over the subsequent 14 years, Visa Petrochemicals turned a linchpin in an elaborate plan by American chemical big UCC to discreetly promote its merchandise in India whereas it evaded prison trial for spewing deadly gases that killed the residents of Bhopal on the midnight of December 2, 1984. A Bhopal courtroom had declared UCC’s then-CEO Warren Anderson a fugitive and ordered that the properties and merchandise of UCC and its subsidiaries, all of which have been proclaimed offenders and absconders in India for not showing within the prison trial towards them, be seized.

Internal firm information, accessed by The Reporters’ Collective (TRC) for Al Jazeera, now reveal that UCC discreetly bought its merchandise to a number of corporations owned by the federal and state governments, and a few giant personal companies. Among them was a purchaser from floor zero: a agency owned by the federal government of Madhya Pradesh, the state whose capital Bhopal noticed one of many world’s worst industrial disasters. The agency was a three way partnership accomplice in a cable firm that purchased UCC merchandise.

To create a discreet backdoor into India the place the general public noticed it because the satan of Bhopal and courts have been going after it, UCC and its associates floated three corporations, one every in India, the United States and Singapore. In its inside information, Carbide workers known as them “front” and “dummy” corporations. At instances, they referred to those corporations as their “extended arms”. These corporations took orders from Indian prospects on UCC’s behalf, relabelled its merchandise, routed them via a number of ports and provided them to prospects. The firm bought supplies that went into the making of family merchandise starting from phone cables to paints.

UCC internally admitted that the dummy corporations have been “a legal requirement” to assist it preserve its “distance from India”. This admission was made in an inside marketing strategy for UCC to maintain promoting its items in India even after the Indian courtroom had ordered the seizure of all its moveable and immovable belongings within the nation. The courtroom didn’t explicitly declare the long run sale of UCC merchandise unlawful. But it had ordered that each one its belongings be seized, together with merchandise and items meant on the market.

The authorities corporations that traded with UCC knew about this backdoor association, as UCC privately knowledgeable them when its entrance firm participated in tenders.

This backdoor association continued till 2002, a 12 months after American big Dow Chemical purchased all belongings of Carbide for $9.3bn. The interval noticed Union governments led by each the principle Indian events, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Between 1995 and 2000, the corporate bought greater than 55,800 tonnes of wires and cables within the Indian market, in keeping with information. In 1999 alone, the corporate bought merchandise value $24m via this association.

While media in India had reported that Dow relabelled UCC’s merchandise and bought them within the nation via a entrance firm for a 12 months, the group’s elaborate discreet channels – the community of entrance and dummy corporations – and data on UCC prospects, together with authorities companies that knowingly purchased merchandise via this shadowy channel, had been buried to this point. Information on the folks behind the dummy corporations and their workings – lively for nearly 14 years – is being printed for the primary time.

The fountainhead of those revelatory information are paperwork submitted in a US courtroom listening to when Dow, UCC and its dummy corporations bought into litigation over the pricing of merchandise within the early 2000s and submitted proof of their relationships.

The collective despatched detailed queries to UCC and Dow however didn’t obtain a response.

Lethal enterprise

It was the dying of a technician from phosgene poisoning on a chilly Christmas eve in 1981 that first foretold an impending disaster and revealed cracks within the UCC manufacturing unit in Bhopal. UCC’s world earnings had plummeted 90 % within the three years previous the catastrophe. Its India unit may promote lower than half its manufacturing capability of Sevin, a “miracle insecticide” born on the banks of the Hudson and reborn in India on the sands of Narmada.

Layoffs took maintain, and cost-cutting affected security and upkeep protocols within the Bhopal plant. On the evening of the catastrophe, the security valves and alarm methods of the tank that saved the deadly chemical compounds, together with the deadly methyl isocyanate used within the manufacturing of Sevin, didn’t work. Some have been dysfunctional, others have been turned off since malfunctioning alarms would repeatedly go off within the leaky plant.

“I remember that night,” stated 60-year-old Leelabai, who lives in Bhopal’s JP Nagar, positioned close to the catastrophe website. At a distance, overlooking her one-room home is the metallic carcass of the manufacturing unit.

“I remember it like yesterday. Our eyes burned, and people began vomiting. There was a stampede,” she stated, tearing up. A lethal fog had crammed close by slums. Death struck in seconds, and nobody was ready.

Leelabai and her husband have been the one survivors within the household. Her three youngsters died through the years as their well being debilitated. “Our lives are worse than death,” she stated.

“None of us knew they had chemicals this dangerous,” Savitribai, one other resident of JP Nagar, instructed TRC.

More than 2,000 folks died over the next days after respiratory a cocktail of lethal fumes, one being hydrocyanic acid, a chemical that causes a collection of reactions resulting in lack of blood circulation to the mind and leading to fast dying.

As per estimates by survivors’ teams, 13,000 folks died over the subsequent few years from broken lungs, brains, kidneys, and nervous and immune methods. Hundreds have been disabled for all times. The toxic chemical compounds polluted (PDF) Bhopal’s soil and water for many years, inflicting a perpetual well being tragedy for residents.

Three days after the catastrophe, when Anderson – nonetheless one of many West’s strongest industrial leaders – visited India, he was positioned below home arrest in UCC’s luxurious guesthouse over costs together with culpable murder, inflicting dying by negligence. Three hours later, Anderson, whose manufacturing unit poisoned a metropolis, was launched on a bail of 25,000 rupees (about $300 on the present change charge). Within 24 hours, he was mysteriously flown out of Bhopal in state Chief Minister Arjun Singh’s jet after which to the US within the firm’s airplane. Anderson by no means returned. He never faced trial. And died peacefully in 2014, aged 92, on US soil the place he rose from a salesman in UCC to its CEO.

UCC was nonetheless the US’s third-largest chemical producer and thirty seventh among the many prime 50 US corporations in 1984. The Bhopal accident was dangerous for enterprise. It was a public relations nightmare and would run up a number of thousands and thousands in authorized prices. UCC needed to discover a solution to proceed commerce. Who would assist the corporate transfer previous this?

The spin-off

For as much as two years after the catastrophe, UCC did its enterprise in India as normal regardless of protests and outrage from survivors and activists. In December 1987, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed costs towards Anderson, UCC and its subsidiary that oversaw Asia operations, Union Carbide Eastern, which was included in Delaware, US. By then, UCC had set in movement a collection of occasions that may assist retain its grip on the Indian market whereas holding a secure distance from courts. The first amongst them was the delivery of Visa Petrochemical Limited.

The firm was a “spin off from UCIL [Union Carbide India Limited]”, stated Visa Petrochemical’s Annual Business Plans, submitted to the UCC in 1994. Ravi Muthukrishnan, the then India nation supervisor of Dow Chemical, famous in an e-mail to his bosses in 2001 that Visa Petrochemical was shaped by former UCC workers engaged in “international trade” after the “government advised them to exit totally out of India”. He additionally famous that Visa, whose title was modified to MegaVisa Marketing and Solutions in 1999, was UCC’s “extended arm” into India.

UCC signed an settlement with Visa Petrochemical on 14 November 1987, 15 days earlier than the CBI filed costs towards the previous, and designated the brand new firm its “non-exclusive distributor in India”. The association allowed UCC to route its merchandise via Visa. Under the contract, Visa’s “duty” was to “canvas and promote sales” of UCC merchandise. It was to do all this whereas “representing” UCC. The latter’s enterprise may now proceed with out the taint of its previous.

In the subsequent few years, UCC included a brand new subsidiary – Carbide Asia Pacific – in Delaware, which slowly took over the operations of Carbide Eastern, an accused celebration within the Bhopal case. This ensured UCC’s Asia companies, together with the settlement with Visa Petrochemicals in India, have been carried out by a agency not named within the case.

In 1989, UCC paid $470m as compensation for the catastrophe in response to the civil lawsuit, which the survivors’ representatives stated was a meagre $500 for every sufferer, and one-sixth of the compensation initially claimed by the federal government. But the federal government accepted the proposal with out consulting the victims.

In 1992, after all of the overseas events who have been accused evaded Indian courts within the prison lawsuit, Bhopal’s chief judicial Justice of the Peace seized all of UCC’s moveable and immovable properties in India. It did so after noting: “The accused Union Carbide USA wants to evade the prosecution going on in this court by transferring its properties in India by any means.” The Justice of the Peace labelled Anderson, UCC (guardian firm primarily based within the US) and Union Carbide Eastern as “absconders”.

For UCC, persevering with commerce now could be harder and extra sophisticated than earlier than. UCC and its associates needed to give you a brand new plan.

New companions

In February 1994, a younger businessman known as Ajay Mittal from Mumbai met UCC officers in Danbury to debate the cargo of its merchandise. The officers discovered the assembly with Mittal “excellent” and “frank”, as per a fax despatched by UCC officers to Mittal a day after their assembly, a duplicate of which was submitted in courtroom paperwork.

Mittal, an American enterprise faculty graduate, is an inheritor to the realty enterprise household Mittal Group and at the moment owns and runs Arshiya Limited, a logistics and provide chain agency. A 2001 Dow India inside report described his household as a “fairly established group” that owns greater than 3,000 buildings in Mumbai.

After the courtroom declared UCC an “absconder” and seized its India belongings, Mittal’s companies proved essential in fulfilling Carbide’s “legal requirement to distance from India”, reveal firm paperwork.

Mittal owned a agency in Houston, known as Mega Global Services, which was arrange in March 1993, paperwork present. A month later, Carbide Asia Pacific terminated its contract with Visa Petrochemicals and, on the identical day, signed a brand new settlement with Mega Global.

Mega Global Services’ function, in keeping with the brand new contract, was to first purchase UCC merchandise and resell them to “customers located in India”. UCC’s merchandise could be relabelled as that of Mega Global Services on this course of.

Mittal didn’t cease there. Two months after the assembly in Houston, he purchased an 89.5 % stake in Visa Petrochemical. His group now owned each the intermediaries essential to UCC’s backdoor channel. Mittal, UCC and Visa Petrochemicals labored out Carbide merchandise’ route into India, which was specified by an annual marketing strategy of Visa Petrochemical.

Visa Petrochemical would scout for purchasers. It would cross on formal worth queries from potential prospects to each Mega Global Services and Union Carbide Asia Pacific. They, in flip, despatched them to the guardian UCC, which might ship the costs to Carbide Asia Pacific. The Asia-Pacific unit would additional ship that info to Visa Petrochemical which despatched it to the client.

If the customer agreed, it might place the order with Mega Global Services. UCC would promote the product to Mega Global Services. UCC would organize a third-party transporter, often known as a “freight forwarder”, to ship the products to the client, in keeping with the settlement. Visa Petrochemical would log off on an indent – a doc itemizing out the merchandise imported – for the client.

While the product originated from UCC warehouses, the vendor on paperwork given on the Indian port was Mega Global Services, for which it earned a fee.

Mega Global Services was known as a “front party as a conduit” in inside correspondence. The majority of Mega Global Services’ enterprise revolved round shopping for after which transport UCC merchandise as their very own.

In 1998, it was changed by a Singapore agency with an identical title – MegaVisa Solutions Pte Ltd. This too was owned by the Mittal Group.

A July 2001 e-mail by a Dow India supervisor to his bosses within the US says, “MegaVisa Singapore entity was set up to take care of the post-Bhopal situation, and is essentially a shell company.”

MegaVisa Singapore purchased UCC merchandise within the US, “took title to them there, and then arranged to ship the products to our customers from there”, Sanjiv Sanghvi, director on the Singapore agency, submitted in an affidavit to the US courtroom in 2002.

This Mittal-owned community of “extended arms” and “shells” would guarantee UCC’s merchandise continued to be bought within the Indian market from 1993 to 2002. And amongst its prospects have been corporations owned by the Indian authorities – the very celebration that was suing it for inflicting dying and accidents to its residents.

Government shoppers

Among UCC’s prospects have been wholly government-owned corporations similar to Gas Authority of India Ltd, Hindustan Photo Films Manufacturing Company Ltd and Hindustan Cables. Lubrizol India, then an equal three way partnership between federal government-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and American chemical firm Lubrizol, was additionally a buyer.

Companies promoted by the governments of Gujarat (Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd), Tamil Nadu (Indian Additives Ltd) and Madhya Pradesh (Vindhya Telelinks Ltd) additionally purchased UCC’s merchandise via the channel. The checklist of shoppers additionally consists of greater than 150 personal corporations, together with Reliance Industries, Sterlite Industries, Finolex Cables, Crompton Greaves, Berger Paints and Castrol India.

Many of UCC’s patrons clearly knew who they have been shaking arms with. Documents present UCC knowledgeable Oil and Natural Gas Company (ONGC) and IOC that the Houston-based Mega Global Services would bid on its behalf for a young floated by the general public sector corporations.

“We hereby authorise Mega Global Services to quote against the above [ONGC’s] tender,” reads a letter, dated November 16, 1994, by Carbide Asia Pacific to ONGC’s normal supervisor. Visa Petrochemical’s 1994 Annual Business Plan notes that the corporate managed a “breakthrough on TEG with ONGC”. TEG, or triethylene glycol, is a plasticiser chemical for which ONGC invited sellers.

“If MM Global Services is successful in winning the tender,” UCC’s December 1999 letter to IOC reads, “Union Carbide Corporation will supply the quantity required, and the product supplied will meet all the requirements of our specification.”

MegaVisa Singapore submitted a July 2001 gross sales bill for an order for methyl isobutyl carbinol value $77,656 by Lubrizol India. Lubrizol India was collectively owned by IOC and Lubrizol.

Visa Petrochemicals, which modified its title to MegaVisa Marketing and Solutions, labored carefully with India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT). “MegaVisa is working with DoT to improve OIT test in the specification,” reads certainly one of Visa’s emails to Dow. OIT or oxidative induction time refers to a take a look at to determine the thermal stability of a wire.

UCC’s Indian entrance, in actual fact, had some degree of affect on the federal government. An inside communication from MegaVisa to Dow from 2001, for instance, states that “with a lot of groundwork”, the corporate managed to persuade the Indian telecom division (DoT) to drift a young for the acquisition of a cable product. This is a product that UCC, via MegaVisa, was supplying to the Indian market. “We need technical support from Dow [the US-based chemical giant had at this point taken over Union Carbide] to push DoT and Utilities for upgradation of specifications”, it says in the identical notice.

“Even in this time of extreme turmoil & hostile environment for our team we have continued to work with DoT,” Mittal stated in an e-mail to a UCC official on May 5, 2000. He additionally notes that MegaVisa’s work with DoT will assist “drive out smaller players”. “As we go ahead we are confident of achieving better volumes and better netbacks for UCC,” he wrote.

Correspondence from two personal corporations – Sterlite and Finolex – present they too knew they have been shopping for UCC merchandise. Both corporations despatched authorized notices to UCC and its subsidiary within the US, and Sterlite even filed a civil swimsuit towards the corporate after some orders they positioned with UCC’s Houston-based entrance firm Mega Global didn’t come via. The corporations finally settled the case out of courtroom.

Mittal didn’t reply to queries from Al Jazeera. An Indian Oil Corporation spokesperson stated the corporate “did not have any comments about the trailing communication”. All the opposite authorities and personal corporations that traded with Carbide’s entrance corporations, together with the DoT, didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s queries.

Dow’s takeover

In February 2001, Dow purchased UCC. Soon, activists demanded that the corporate come clear on why its absolutely owned subsidiary by no means confronted trial and pay further compensation to victims. Dow refused to take possession of UCC’s liabilities, arguing that it by no means owned the Bhopal plant and that the latter is a separate authorized entity.

However, Dow additionally continued buying and selling UCC’s merchandise for a 12 months utilizing its middleman corporations. But it was eager to masks its hyperlink to UCC. An e-mail by the corporate’s public affairs director in March 2001 reads, “Reporters will be tempted to keep talking about Union Carbide. But we should discourage reporters from using the words Union Carbide, unless it’s a reference to a historical activity.”

In January 2002, Dow (India) knowledgeable MegaVisa that it might now not be the distributor of most UCC merchandise. By this time, suggestions from at the least one Indian buyer, Berger Paints, on MegaVisa’s personnel was not optimistic – referring to them as “non-committal”, paperwork present. Additionally, Dow’s India officers internally advisable that “major customers should be handled directly by Dow”.

MegaVisa, in flip, held Dow answerable for its losses. A 12 months later, Houston- and Singapore-based MegaVisa corporations filed a case towards Dow and UCC on “antitrust” grounds within the US Connecticut District Court. The MegaVisa corporations alleged Dow had gone again on its contractual obligations and hampered its earnings.

Dow finally settled with the Mittal-owned corporations out of courtroom, together with the companies in Houston, Singapore and India. The particulars of the settlement should not recognized. UCC’s Indian entrance MegaVisa filed for liquidation in 2010. Its funds mirror an organization that was struggling losses.

The similar 12 months, the then Congress-led federal authorities moved India’s prime courtroom to alter its 1989 order setting the compensation for the catastrophe’s victims. In its petition, it requested the Supreme Court to rethink that quantity and demand further compensation collectively from UCC, Dow and Union Carbide India Limited. At the time, the victims’ representatives additionally demanded that the “corporate veil” of UCC, its subsidiaries and Dow be lifted. The case, pending for greater than a decade, was final heard in October 2022 through which the Supreme Court requested the federal government to incorporate the victims’ calls for in its illustration.

Shreegireesh Jalihal and Kumar Sambhav are members of The Reporters’ Collective.