Lawyers acting for Trafigura, the offshore company at the centre of one of the world's most notorious toxic waste dumping scandals, said yesterday that the company was suing the BBC's Newsnight programme for libel. More than 30,000 people in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where the waste was dumped, are bringing Britain's biggest-ever group action against the London-based oil traders, saying poisons in the waste were dumped all over the city and made them ill. The company's libel lawyers, Carter-Ruck, did not respond last night to requests to specify what statements in the programme were alleged to be libellous.