On 20 August, 2006 people of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, woke to find that foul-smelling, toxic waste had been dumped in their city. This report follows a three-year investigation by Amnesty International and Greenpeace Netherlands into the dumping, the events that led to it, and the action taken in response to the dumping. It is a story of corporate crime, human rights abuses and the failures of multiple governments to act to protect people and the environment from companies bent on making profit with scant regard for the human or environmental costs.