The following video, filed in the Southern District of New York, is an overview of the plaintiffs’ lawyers and representatives’ misconduct and the evidence of their ghostwriting of all or parts of the judgment against Chevron in Ecuador.
Filing Asks National Court of Justice to Review and Overturn Appellate Judgment
Chevron Corporation today announced that it has filed an appeal seeking review by Ecuador’s National Court of Justice of the adverse appellate judgment issued against the company in early 2012 by a panel of three temporary judges in the environmental lawsuit in Ecuador.
“Today’s appeal gives the National Court of Justice an opportunity to correct the grave injustices that have occurred in this case.”
Chevron’s appeal, called a petition for cassation, details multiple legal grounds for reversal of the January appellate court decision. The appeal establishes that the lower courts violated the Ecuadorian constitution by refusing to take any corrective action in response to the extensive fraud and corruption committed by plaintiffs’ lawyers and their representatives. The filing goes on to outline several other fundamental points, including: that the lower court’s judgment is unlawfully premised on fraudulent and scientifically baseless evidence; that the judgment is illegally based upon the retroactive application of law; that it ignores the releases of liability granted to Texaco Petroleum Co. (Tex Pet) by the government of Ecuador following a cleanup of Tex Pet’s share of remediation sites in the 1990s; and that the judgment awarded punitive and other damages never requested in plaintiffs’ complaint and not allowed under Ecuadorian law.
“Throughout the course of this litigation, judges corruptly operating in concert with the plaintiffs’ lawyers have created, rather than corrected, injustice,” said Hewitt Pate, Chevron vice president and general counsel. “Today’s appeal gives the National Court of Justice an opportunity to correct the grave injustices that have occurred in this case.”
In addition to the cassation appeal filing today, Chevron continues to seek recourse through legal proceedings outside of Ecuador. In the arbitration proceedings Chevron instituted against Ecuador in The Hague under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), the Tribunal issued an order on February 9, 2011, requiring Ecuador to take all measures at its disposal to suspend enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment until further order of the Tribunal. The Tribunal also recorded that if it were established that any judgment made by an Ecuadorian court in the Lago Agrio case was a breach of an obligation Ecuador owed to Chevron as a matter of international law, any loss arising from the enforcement of such judgment (within and without Ecuador) may be losses for which Ecuador would be responsible to Chevron under international law.
Based on the Tribunal’s order, Chevron has asked that the Ecuadorian appellate court take all steps to suspend enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment until further order of the Tribunal, including suspension of any requirement that Chevron post a bond to prevent enforcement of the judgment during the cassation appeal. Any demand that Chevron post a bond in this case would be a violation of Ecuador’s international obligations under the order of the BIT Tribunal, and Chevron has no obligation to post such a bond.
The plaintiffs have indicated that they will seek to have Ecuador defy the BIT Tribunal’s order by pursuing enforcement of the corrupt judgment outside of Ecuador before the BIT Tribunal has an opportunity to review the merits of the case. In the event the plaintiffs carry through on their threats to file enforcement actions against Chevron affiliates in other countries, Chevron will take appropriate steps to defend against this fraud.
Chevron also is pursuing an action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Lago Agrio plaintiffs’ representatives for violations of the federal racketeering statute, common-law fraud and other relief based upon the overwhelming evidence of their fraud and corruption.
A copy of Chevron’s cassation appeal can be accessed here.
Professional do-gooder Kerry Kennedy — Gov. Cuomo’s ex-wife and the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy — has called the oil-drilled rain forests of Ecuador “the biggest corporate environmental disaster on the face of the Earth, in the history of the world.”
The human-rights activist penned opinion pieces and lobbied officials to voice her outrage at the damage oil companies have caused to the town of Lago Agrio, where 1,700 square miles of rain forest have been destroyed and people sickened.
What Kennedy has never mentioned during her campaign is that she is being paid handsomely for her seemingly selfless advocacy.
Kennedy, 52, was secretly hired as a “public-relations consultant” by the lawyer representing the Ecuadoreans in an $18 billion lawsuit against Chevron, according to court documents.
Cashing in on her respected family name and legacy, Kennedy raked in tens of thousands of dollars and was given a 0.25 percent stake — worth as much as $40 million — if the $18 billion judgment handed down by an Ecuadorean judge is ultimately upheld. (Chevron has not yet paid pending its countersuit in Manhattan federal court.)
Kennedy was paid a flat $50,000 by lead attorney Steven Donziger on Feb. 22, 2010, bank statements made public in the case show.
She was set to pull down an additional $10,000 per month, according to a September 2010 draft budget by the law firm. And she was to get another $40,000 in expenses in June 2010, according to an invoice from Donziger.
But being a hired shill didn’t stop Kennedy from presenting herself as a crusader with only a personal interest and familial duty to Ecuador’s indigenous masses.
Chevron Corporation today announced there has been an adverse ruling by the panel of three temporary judges presiding over appellate proceedings in the Provincial Court of Justice of Sucumbios in Lago Agrio, Ecuador in an environmental lawsuit involving Texaco Petroleum Company, upholding a lower court’s ruling from February 2011.
Chevron continues to seek recourse through legal proceedings outside of Ecuador. In the arbitration proceedings Chevron instituted against Ecuador in The Hague under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, the Tribunal issued an order on February 9, 2011 requiring Ecuador to take all measures at its disposal to prevent enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment until further order of the Tribunal. The Tribunal also recorded that if it were established that any judgment made by an Ecuadorian court in the Lago Agrio case was a breach of an obligation Ecuador owed to Chevron as a matter of international law, any loss arising from the enforcement of such judgment (within and without Ecuador) may be losses for which Ecuador would be responsible to Chevron under international law. Chevron also is pursuing an action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the Lago Agrio plaintiffs’ representatives for violations of the federal racketeering statute, common-law fraud, and other relief based upon the overwhelming evidence of their fraud and corruption.
In response to the ruling, Chevron issued the following statement:
“Today’s decision is another glaring example of the politicization and corruption of Ecuador’s judiciary that has plagued this fraudulent case from the start. The Lago Agrio judgment was procured through a corrupt and fraudulent scheme, much of which was captured on film and memorialized in the plaintiffs’ representatives’ own emails and correspondence. Their misconduct includes fabricating expert reports, manufacturing evidence, bribing and colluding with court officials, waging a campaign of intimidation against judges, and even ghostwriting parts of the verdict itself.
“Evidence of these crimes has been provided to Ecuador’s courts and prosecutors, but authorities there have taken no corrective actions. In the United States, however, no less than eight federal judges have found that the trial in Ecuador has been marred by the fraud and misconduct of the plaintiffs’ representatives. And an international Tribunal presiding in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has ordered Ecuador to take all measures at its disposal to suspend enforcement of the Lago Agrio judgment within and without Ecuador.
“Chevron does not believe that the Ecuador ruling is enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law. The company will continue to seek to hold accountable the perpetrators of this fraud.”
Background:
Chevron is defending itself against false allegations that it is responsible for environmental and social harms in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Chevron has never conducted oil production operations in Ecuador, and its subsidiary, Texaco Petroleum (TexPet), fully remediated its share of environmental impacts arising from its participation in an oil producing consortium with Petroecuador prior to 1992. After the remediation work was certified by all agencies of the Ecuadorian government responsible for oversight, TexPet received a complete release from Ecuador’s national, provincial and municipal governments prior to being acquired by Chevron in 2001. Petroecuador was the majority owner of the consortium in which TexPet participated until 1992 and has been the sole owner of greatly expanded oil operations in the former concession area over the past two decades. Last month, Petroecuador announced it will complete its remediation of the sites it is responsible for at a cost of $70 million. This figure stands in contrast to the multi-billion dollar judgment affirmed today.
Company Submits Evidence of Fraud and other Crimes to Ecuador’s Prosecutor General
Chevron Corporation today published a letter submitted to Galo Chiriboga, Ecuador’s Prosecutor General, documenting evidence of fraud and corruption in the litigation against Chevron in Ecuador. The company called on Ecuadorian authorities to investigate the misconduct of the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the presiding judge, Nicholas Zambrano, in the drafting of the fraudulent judgment rendered against Chevron earlier this year.
Chevron submitted evidence showing that plaintiffs’ representatives—including Steven Donziger, Pablo Fajardo, Juan Pablo Sáenz, Julio Prieto, and Luis Yanza—covertly worked with Judge Zambrano to draft the judgment. The letter states that the fraudulent conduct “is causing serious, ongoing harm to Chevron Corporation and to the Republic of Ecuador.”
“To date, the plaintiffs’ representatives have failed to offer any explanation for how their internal, never-filed documents came to appear in the fraudulent Lago Agrio judgment,” said Hewitt Pate, Chevron vice president and general counsel. “Nor has the Judge explained how the plaintiffs’ private work came to be included in the decision bearing his name. In the interest of justice and due process, it is incumbent upon the authorities in Ecuador to investigate the full extent of this misconduct.”
There is substantial and unrefuted evidence that the judgment against Chevron is fraudulent. The evidence provided to the Prosecutor General includes:
Much of this evidence is corroborated by expert analyses commissioned by Chevron that found the similarities between the plaintiffs’ documents and the judgment are too great to be coincidence, and concluded that either plaintiffs wrote at least part of the judgment, or the author(s) of the judgment had access to documents prepared by the plaintiffs’ representatives and lawyers that were never submitted during the trial.
“This evidence raises disturbing questions about who is really behind the Lago Agrio judgment,” added Pate. “This is just the latest chapter in an established pattern of fraud being carried out by plaintiffs’ lawyers and their representatives.”
In addition to the letter, Chevron has submitted corresponding evidence including video outtakes, emails, and other documents to prosecutors in Ecuador.
Chevron General Counsel Hewitt Pate said he welcomed the announcement as a sign of the country’s commitment to its 1995 agreement with Texaco.
“Petroecuador’s $70 million remediation budget, which covers an area larger than that of Texaco’s remediation, is within a reasonable cost range under U.N. standards,” he said in a statement.
San Ramon-based Chevron praised a recent decision by Ecuador’s government-owned oil company, Petroecuador, to complete the cleanup of oil-contaminated sites for which Petroecuador is responsible.
Petroecuador has set a budget of $70 million to clean up its sites in an area that is larger than the sites that Chevron is responsible for cleaning up. Chevron became responsible for an oil cleanup when it bought Texaco, which had petroleum operations in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador.
Chevron is defending against a multibillion-dollar legal action in connection with oil contamination in the region.
Chevron Corp. officials Friday lauded the announcement made this week that Ecuadorian state-oil company Petroecuador will clean up tracts of the amazon allegedly polluted by Texaco.
Petroecuador will spend $70 million to clean up oil and toxic materials Texaco left behind in the country, which some claim hurt the wellbeing of locals in the region and hurt the environment. The topic has been an on-going legal case between locals in Ecuador and Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001.
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador is leading a relentless campaign against free speech, harassing his critics, forcing independent broadcasters off the air and hijacking the nation’s courts in his bid to bankrupt the country’s largest newspaper.
Reporters are frequently assassinated in Mexico, and a populist government in Venezuela has driven some journalists into exile. But press freedom advocates say that no other country in Latin America is moving so fast and on so many fronts to restrain the media as tiny, banana-producing Ecuador.
President Rafael Correa, an American-educated leftist economist who has forged close alliances with Cuba and Iran, has filed a defamation lawsuit that might put the three directors of the country’s largest newspaper in jail and shutter their 90-year-old paper. The government has cobbled together a framework of laws and constitutional reforms to limit press independence, free expression groups say, while building a media conglomerate to disparage critics and counter independent media reports.
The appeal, read Chevron’s announcement, “establishes that the lower courts violated the Ecuadorian constitution by refusing to take any corrective action in response to the extensive fraud and corruption committed by plaintiffs lawyers and their representatives.”
Fadel Gheit, an analyst with Oppenheimer who follows the company, agrees.
“If I was ruling Chevron, I would fight until the very last minute of my job, and make sure the next guy behind me will not pay them anything,” Gheit said. “They are a bunch of scam artists.”
Gheit said Chevron has no choice but to fight the lawsuit to the end, because paying would set a precedent that other people across the globe could try exploiting.
Since taking office in 2007, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has been in a war of words with the media in his country. He’s used archaic libel laws to pursue criminal charges against the owners of El Universo and a columnist at the newspaper. His government has pushed through a law that severely restricts the media’s ability to cover political campaigns and elections; indeed, it goes so far as to ban any media reports that can benefit or hurt a candidate. And now he’s set his sights on international media observers.
U.S. oil giant Chevron Corp. said it would pursue another appeal of a multibillion dollar judgment against in Ecuador for environmental contamination.
The company said it has submitted a petition to have a review performed by Ecuador’s National Court of Justice, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
