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Ecuadorian Court Rules Against Chevron in Historic Case
Sofía Jarrín - 16.02.2011 17:19
 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/ecuador-archives-49/2907-ecuadorian-court-rules-against-chevron-in-historic-case
Written by Sofía Jarrín Tuesday, 15 February 2011 22:08
Ecuadorian Court Rules Against Chevron in Historic Case
The military procession travelled from the end of the pipeline to the highlands of Ecuador, to celebrate the country's first barrel of crude oil extracted from Lago Agrio, Sucumbios province, on July 26, 1972. Ecuador's military running the government, dictatorship-style, was honoring the signed contract with Texaco Petroleum Company to fulfill the promise of economic prosperity and development for the small Andean country. Many present during the official ceremony dipped their hands in the thick substance to signal the beginning of a new era. That first barrel of crude oil is still sitting in a corner of the Military School “Eloy Alfaro” museum.
Forty years later, a court in the same small town of Lago Agrio, ruled against the oil company requiring Texaco, now Chevron Corporation, to pay $8.6 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon and permanently affecting the lives of thousands of villagers in the area. According to the plaintiffs, the environmental contamination left by the company in a span of 26 years is ten times worse than the Gulf of Mexico spill.
“We can tell our neighbors and those affected that justice exists. They can dream again of drinking clean water, not with oil residue like we've had to drink until now. We can dream that the cleanup of the land can begin and dream of a better way of life,” said Guillermo Grefa, an indigenous Amazon leader.
The residents of Sucumbios spent the last 18 years seeking justice for the environmental damages suffered in their territories by Texaco’s oil exploration. These are mostly indigenous people who before the oil company moved in, were hunters, gatherers, subsistence farmers who depended on the rivers as their main water source. Now the region has the highest incidence of cancer in the country, with an excess of deaths among men from all types of cancer 3.6 times higher in the villages closest to the oil fields, according to a study published in the Occupational Environmental Medicine journal. Child leukemia is three times the national average as well.
Worse stories can be found on the book Las palabras de la selva (The jungle speaks), a psychosociological report on the impact of Texaco’s oil exploration on the Amazon communities of Ecuador published by the Institute of Development and International Cooperation Studies. Based on ground analysis and oral testimonies, the researchers found that 72.4 percent of the population were affected by the land and water pollution generated by the oil fields, although most lacked information about what could be harmful to their health, such as eating dead, contaminated fish. From those interviewed, 87.8 percent reported to have lost their crops and 22.1 percent were forcibly displaced. Indigenous tribes went into a process of "forced acculturation" that meant to many, the loss of spiritual and cultural relations they once had with the rainforest. The introduction of money, alcohol and new diseases forever changed their way of life.
The researchers also found out that sexual violence was also a recurring problem, and despite cultural restraints of shame and silence around these issues, one in seven people said to have known personally, including the names of the victims and incidents details, cases of sexual violence against indigenous women and girls allegedly perpetrated by Texaco workers and settlers.
Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco drilled 399 oil fields in an area as big as 1 million acres (430.000 hectares) and extracted as many as 1,500 barrels of crude oil with a profit of around $30 billion. In the process, Chevron has admitted that Texaco dumped over 18.5 billion gallons of toxic water into streams and soil in the rainforest – about 4 million gallons daily at the height of its operation. According to the Amazon Defense Front, Texaco administered over 900 unlined, open-air waste pits out of the jungle floor and filled them with deadly toxins that were run off via a piping system into nearby streams and rivers. The company also burned or vented millions of cubic meters of natural gas into the atmosphere without adequate controls.
In a confidential memo dated July 17, 1972, Texaco gave specific instructions to its operational base in Ecuador by stating that “only major events as per Oil Spill Response Plan instructions are to be reported”, further clarifying that a major event is that “which attracts the attention of the press and/or regulatory authorities.” That was just the beginning of a series of attempts by Texaco and its parent company since 2001, Chevron, to shadow the truth about the environmental damage inflicted during a time when little regulations existed.
During the length of the trial, the company was accused of constantly manipulating the facts and other acts of corruption, among which the worst was likely the creation of a fake lab in Ecuador to make an “independent assessment” of the environmental damages that surprisingly contradicted the plaintiffs findings. Chevron also held an extensive lobbying campaign in the United States to pressure the Bush administration to force Ecuador to drop the case. There are accusations of case materials that have mysteriously disappeared, and confirmed death threats against the lawyers who represented the affected communities.
The case, Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco, began on November 3, 1993, when 30,000 people from Ecuador’s Amazon filed a class action suit against Texaco in New York federal court. The trial was then forced to move from New York to a local court in Ecuador in 2002, alleging that any decision required national jurisdiction.
In Ecuador, two local judges were removed from the case under direct pressure from Chevron which accused the courts of being corrupt, unfair, and inadequate. This forced each incoming judge to review tens of thousands of documents, as Ecuador's legal proceedings rely on written instead of oral statements. The third, Nicolás Zambrano, was considered to be a more conservative judge, but he finally ruled against Chevron ordering the company to pay $8.6 billion in damages and twice that amout if they refuse to "publicly apologize to the victims of the Ecuadorian Amazon for the crimes committed."
"No amount of money will give their lives back and the damage caused by the pollution. However, this amount is not enough to remediate what has been affected," said Luiz Yanza, co-founder of the Amazon Defense Front. "We have to remember that water, life, the earth were damaged. That many people died. That is why we believe that amount must be reviewed."
The plaintiffs have announced they will appeal the decision to demand the $27 billion they think is needed to repair the damages done to the environment and improve people's health in the region. Chevron Corporation has also vowed to appeal, calling the court's ruling the product of fraud, and is leaning on a recent jurisdiction by a New York judge that blocked any award from this case for 28 days citing the "company [is] of considerable importance to our economy."
In a statement released by Pablo Fajardo, one of the best-known attorneys representing the indigenous tribes said that rather than accepting responsibility, Chevron continues its campaign of warfare against the Ecuadorian courts.
"We call on the company to end its polemical attacks and search jointly with the plaintiffs for common solutions. We believe the evidence before the court deserves international respect and the plaintiffs will take whatever actions are appropriate consistent with the law to press the claims to a final conclusion," he said.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/images/stories/chevron-guilty1.jpg
Image from www.ChevronToxico.com.
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| Read more about: globalisering natuur, dier en mens vrijheid, repressie & mensenrechten | | supplements | | Ecuadorian Court Orders Chevron to Pay | DemocracyNow! - 16.02.2011 17:41
http://traffic.libsyn.com/democracynow/dn2011-0215-1.mp3
Ecuadorian Court Orders Chevron to Pay $17 Billion for Oil Pollution in Amazon
The oil giant Chevron has been ordered to pay more than $17 billion in fines and punitive damages in a long-running case over environmental contamination in Ecuador. Amazonian residents sued Texaco, which was then purchased by Chevron, for dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into Ecuador’s rain forest since the 1970s. On Monday, an Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron to pay an $8.6 billion fine and an equal amount in punitive damages. It’s the second-largest total assessed for environmental damages behind the $20 billion compensation fund for BP’s Gulf Coast oil spill. Chevron has vowed to appeal, but it has also suggested it will not pay up under any circumstance, calling the ruling "illegitimate and unenforceable." The plaintiffs also say they plan to appeal because the damages are too low. Joining us to talk about the case is Andrew Miller with Amazon Watch. [includes rush transcript]
AMY GOODMAN: The oil giant Chevron has been fined over $17 billion in a long-running case over environmental contamination in Ecuador. Amazonian residents have sued Chevron for dumping billions of gallons of toxic oil waste into Ecuador’s rain forest since the '70s. On Monday, an Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron to pay an $8.6 billion fine and an equal amount in punitive damages. It's the second-largest total assessment for environmental damages, behind the $20 billion compensation fund for BP’s Gulf Coast oil spill. Under the ruling, the punitive damages would be waived if Chevron issues a public apology within 15 days.
Chevron has vowed to appeal, but it’s also suggested it won’t pay up under any circumstances, calling the ruling, quote, "illegitimate and unenforceable." The plaintiffs, meanwhile, say they plan to appeal, as well, because the damages are too low. On Monday, a spokesperson for the plaintiffs, Luis Lanza, reacted to the verdict.
LUIS LANZA: [translated] We are very happy. We are inspired to continue with the fight. However, yes, we express our disappointment in regards to the economic figure that the judge has given in his ruling. We believe that $8 billion that the judge has ruled does not meet our expectations based on tests and facts. It is not enough to cover the majority of damages or to repair said damages.
AMY GOODMAN: The ruling comes over 17 years after the case was first filed in a New York court. Chevron successfully fought to have it moved to Ecuador in 2003. In 2008, reports emerged that Chevron had lobbied the Bush administration to remove special trade preferences for Ecuador to pressure the Ecuadorian government to block the case. Chevron has also filed counter-suits against the plaintiffs, their attorneys and the Ecuadorian government in U.S. courts and at The Hague.
For more on the case, we’re joined now from Washington, D.C., by Andrew Miller, the D.C. advocacy coordinator for Amazon Watch. We did ask Chevron to appear on the broadcast, but they declined our request.
So, Andrew, explain what the response is to the court’s ruling.
ANDREW MILLER: Well, Amy, thank you very much for having me on, and it’s really a pleasure, after 18 years, to be able to be announcing to your listeners and to your viewers that this historic judgment has come out. And it’s really a great day for the 30,000 plaintiffs in this case who have been seeking justice.
Of course, Chevron has been fighting this at every possible step. They’ve been fighting it in the courts. They’ve been trying to fight it, you know, in terms of public opinion. They’ve been trying to fight it in political spheres, as you indicated. But finally, the Ecuadorian court system has agreed with what the plaintiffs have been saying for several decades, which is, essentially, that Chevron—well, Texaco, which is now owned by Chevron, over the course of two-and-a-half decades, it planned, created, implemented a system which systematically polluted in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It left hundreds of toxic waste pits. It dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste. And really, the whole time that this trial has been going on over the course of 18 years, the communities continue to live with that legacy, and they continue to suffer the impacts, the health impacts, the cultural impacts, the environmental impacts of that destruction.
And so, this is an important day for the communities. It’s just one step; it’s not a victory. But it is very crucial for them. It’s also an important day for the broader struggle for corporate accountability around the world, for broader struggles for environmental justice and human rights.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at an article from Bloomberg. It says, "Chevron [Corp.], the second-largest U.S. oil company, may never pay a cent of the more than $17 billion in fines and penalties levied by an Ecuadorean court for environmental damage... Chevron doesn’t have any refineries, storage terminals, oil wells or other properties in Ecuador that could be seized to pressure the company to pay, said Mark Gilman, an analyst at Benchmark Co. LLC in New York. In anticipation of an adverse ruling, Chevron went to court in New York last week to obtain an order shielding the company anywhere in the world from collection efforts related to the case." Your response, Andrew Miller?
ANDREW MILLER: Well, ultimately, we’re going to have to leave that up to the lawyers. There are going to be appeals in the Ecuadorian system. We know that. Both Chevron is going to appeal, to try to get the ruling thrown out, the plaintiffs are also going to appeal, because they don’t believe that the ruling, that the damages, are sufficient. So, that process is going to continue, we assume, in the months that come, in the years that come.
You know, but it’s important that the people who have been following this case—and I know you’ve been following it for years, and many others. Amazon Watch has been working on it for 10 years. Many other groups, Rainforest Action Network, Amnesty International, have been backing the plaintiffs in their case and the campaign in different ways. So it’s obvious that we’re going to have to continue to wage this campaign well into the future. But this is still an important step. And again, not only in this case, but we assume that communities around the world are also listening to this, and, you know, we might be seeing other similar kinds of actions against corporations that have polluted and have contributed to human rights violations.
AMY GOODMAN: In Chevron’s statement, which they pointed us to rather than coming on, aside from saying that the court’s judgment is "illegitimate and unenforceable," they say it’s "the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence." They go on to say, "Chevron intends to see the perpetrators of this fraud are held accountable for [their] misconduct." What exactly do they mean?
ANDREW MILLER: Well, I mean, essentially, Chevron is trying to play themselves off as the victim here, which is quite extraordinary, of course—one of the largest corporations in the world, you know, essentially against some of the most marginalized communities in the world, indigenous communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. You know, and one of the extraordinary things here is that Chevron fought for years, actually, to have the jurisdiction moved from the United States to Ecuador. And they claimed that they could get a fair trial there, they claimed that they could get a transparent trial, and they essentially agreed to accept whatever the decision was. So they fought for years to do that.
Also, the evidence that they’re talking of, I mean, the evidence that was used by the judge, is actually Chevron’s own evidence. The thousands of soil samples were carried out by the court, were carried out by experts that had been brought on by the plaintiffs, and also were carried out by scientists and experts that were brought on by Chevron. So, the evidence in this judgment is actually Chevron’s own evidence. So it’s their evidence. It’s in the venue that they fought for for a long time. And, you know, I essentially think that Chevron doesn’t want this to happen in any jurisdiction, whether it’s the United States or Ecuador or anywhere around the world. Effectively, they believe that they’re above the law. And, you know, the Ecuadorian communities that have been affected by their operations are saying otherwise.
AMY GOODMAN: How large a swath of land are we talking about in Ecuador, Andrew Miller?
ANDREW MILLER: Well, we’re talking about thousands of different acres. It’s worth mentioning that this is one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. I mean, where the Andes and the Amazon meet is a biodiversity hot spot. It’s also the headwaters of the Amazon River, so when we’re talking about water pollution, the effect is not simply limited to these, you know, tens of thousands of acres that are being affected by ChevronTexaco’s former operating sites there, but it’s also all of the communities downstream. Of course, there are many other oil operators in the same part of the world that are also polluting. We’re seeing a lot of oil spills in northern Peru right now, which are really the same rivers. So we can assume it’s also the communities all downstream, down the Amazon River, that are ultimately indirectly affected by these operations.
AMY GOODMAN: This is the first time indigenous people have sued a multinational corporation in the country where the crime was committed and won?
ANDREW MILLER: This is the first time, yeah, that we know of. So, in that sense, it’s very much historic. It’s not the only case, of course, that’s being brought against multinational corporations. There are similar cases. I just mentioned in northern Peru, there’s a similar case from Achuar communities against Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. That case is much in sort of earlier stages, and we expect a multi-year legal battle on that front, too. But yeah, this is the first time that one of the largest corporations in the world is essentially and effectively being held accountable in a court system for past environmental damages, for human rights violations.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew Miller, we want to thank you for being us, D.C. advocacy coordinator for Amazon Watch.
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Guest:
Andrew Miller, Washington, D.C.-based Advocacy Coordinator for Amazon Watch.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/15/ecuadoran_court_orders_chevron_to_pay
| | Chevron fined for Amazon pollution | BBC News - LA & CA - 16.02.2011 18:08
15 February 2011 Last updated at 05:58 GMT
BBC News - LATIN AMERICA & CARIBBEAN
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51253000/gif/_51253053_lagoagrio.gif
Chevron fined for Amazon pollution by Ecuador court
A court in Ecuador has fined US oil giant Chevron $8.6bn (£5.3bn) for polluting a large part of the country's Amazon region.
The oil firm Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic materials into unlined pits and Amazon rivers.
Campaigners say crops were damaged and farm animals killed, and that local cancer rates increased.
Condemning the ruling as fraudulent, Chevron said it would appeal.
The company will also have to pay a 10% legally mandated reparations fee, bringing the total penalty to $9.5bn (£5.9bn).
Pablo Fajardo, lawyer for the plaintiffs, described the court ruling as "a triumph of justice over Chevron's crime and economic power".
"This is an important step but we're going to appeal this sentence because we think that the damages awarded are not enough considering the environmental damage caused by Chevron here in Ecuador," he told the BBC.
A Chevron statement said the firm would appeal, and called the ruling "illegitimate and unenforceable".
Hopes of precedent
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadoreans, in a case which dragged on for nearly two decades.
The plaintiffs said the company's activities had destroyed large areas of rainforest and also led to an increased risk of cancer among the local population.
The trial began in 2003 after almost a decade of legal battles in the US. At that time, a US appeals court ruled that the case should be heard in Ecuador.
Environmentalists hope the case will set a precedent, forcing companies operating in developing countries to comply with the same anti-pollution standards as in the industrialised world.
Ecuadorean Indian groups said Texaco - which merged with Chevron in 2001 - dumped more than 18 billion gallons (68 billion litres) of toxic materials into the unlined pits and rivers between 1972 and 1992.
Protesters said the company had destroyed their livelihood. Crops were damaged, farm animals killed and cancer increased among the local population, they said.
Chevron has long contended that the court-appointed expert in the case was unduly influenced by the plaintiffs.
Its statement described the ruling as "the product of fraud (and) contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12460333
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Illegitimate Judgment Against Chevron in Ecuador Lawsuit
Chevron to appeal in Ecuador, enforcement blocked by U.S. and international tribunals
SAN RAMON, Calif. – Feb. 14, 2011 – Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) today announced there has been an adverse judgment from the Provincial Court of Justice of Sucumbíos in Lago Agrio, Ecuador in an environmental lawsuit involving Texaco Petroleum Company.
In response to the ruling, Chevron issued the following statement:
"The Ecuadorian court's judgment is illegitimate and unenforceable. It is the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence. Chevron will appeal this decision in Ecuador and intends to see that justice prevails.
"United States and international tribunals already have taken steps to bar enforcement of the Ecuadorian ruling. Chevron does not believe that today's judgment is enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law.
"Chevron intends to see that the perpetrators of this fraud are held accountable for their misconduct."
More information can be found at
http://www.chevron.com/ecuador.
http://www.chevron.com/chevron/pressreleases/article/02142011_illegitimatejudgmentagainstchevroninecuadorlawsuit.news
| | Amazon pollution: Chevron hits back Ecuador | BBC News - LA & CA - 16.02.2011 22:48
15 February 2011 - Last updated at 11:48 GMT
Amazon pollution: Chevron hits back in row with Ecuador
US oil giant Chevron says it will appeal against an $8.6bn (£5.3bn) fine imposed by Ecuador judges, carrying on a long-running row over pollution.
Chevron's Kent Robertson told the BBC the case was an "extortion scheme", and accused Ecuador's state-run firm of polluting the country's Amazon region.
The legal wrangle has been going on for almost two decades, and has spawned lawsuits in the US and Ecuador.
Analysts say further appeals are likely to drag on for years.
The oil firm Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, is accused of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into unlined pits and Amazon rivers between 1972 and 1992.
Campaigners say crops were damaged and farm animals killed, and that local cancer rates increased.
'Triumph of justice'
But Chevron says Texaco spent $40m cleaning up the area during the 1990s, and signed an agreement with Ecuador in 1998 absolving it of any further responsibility.
Mr Robertson, the firm's spokesman, told the BBC's World Today programme that Texaco had "operated admirably" and blamed Ecuador's state-run firm Petroecuador for any ongoing problems.
"The oilfields in question have been solely operated by the government of Ecuador's own oil company Petroecuador for the last 20 years," he said.
"Petroecuador has a deplorable environmental record and Chevron is getting blamed for actions in a country that we've never even operated in."
He accused Petroecuador and Ecuador's government of failing to live up to their responsibilities. Neither have responded to the claims.
The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadoreans, and their lawyer Pablo Fajardo described the court ruling as "a triumph of justice over Chevron's crime and economic power".
But he said the damages were not enough, and pledged to appeal.
Environmentalists hoped the case would set a precedent, forcing companies operating in developing countries to comply with the same anti-pollution standards as in the industrialised world.
US-based lobby groups Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network said in a joint statement that the decision was "historic and unprecedented".
"Chevron has spent the last 18 years waging unprecedented public relations and lobbying campaigns to avoid cleaning up the environmental and public health catastrophe it left in the Amazon rainforest," the groups said.
But analysts say Chevron is determined that it will not pay the fine.
Earlier this month, the firm took its case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ordered Ecuador to suspend enforcement of any judgement against Chevron to allow arbitration to continue.
Separately, Chevron has also filed a case in the US courts accusing the claimants and lawyers in the case of racketeering, tampering with witnesses and obstructing justice.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12464063
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Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch Statement on Ecuador Court Ruling Against Chevron
February 14, 2011
Evidence Prevails Over Oil Giant’s Intimidation Tactics
For Immediate Release
CONTACTS:
Nell Greenberg, Rainforest Action Network, 510.847.9777
Caroline Bennett, Amazon Watch, 510.520.9390
SAN FRANCISCO-Today a court in Lago Agrio, Ecuador has ruled in favor of the residents of Ecuador's Amazon region who have spent the last 18 years seeking damages for crude oil pollution. Chevron inherited the suit when it bought Texaco in 2001, and has denied the allegations of environmental damage.
Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network, who have spent years working to help the Ecuadorian people and protect the Amazon, release the following statement in response to today’s verdict:
“As of today, Chevron’s guilt for extensive oil contamination in the Amazon rainforest is official. It is time Chevron takes responsibility for these environmental and public health damages, which they have fought for the past 18 years.
“Today’s ruling in Ecuador against Chevron proves overwhelmingly that the oil giant is responsible for billions gallons of highly toxic waste sludge deliberately dumped into local streams and rivers, which thousands depend on for drinking, bathing, and fishing.
“Chevron has spent the last 18 years waging unprecedented public relations and lobbying campaigns to avoid cleaning up the environmental and public health catastrophe it left in the Amazon rainforest. Today’s guilty verdict sends a loud and clear message: It is time Chevron clean up its disastrous mess in Ecuador.
“Today’s case is historic and unprecedented. It is the first time Indigenous people have sued a multinational corporation in the country where the crime was committed and won.
“Today’s historic ruling against Chevron is a testament to the strength of the Ecuadorian people who have spent 18 years bringing Chevron to justice while suffering the effects of the company’s extensive oil contamination.”
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Rainforest Action Network runs hard-hitting campaigns to break North America’s addiction to fossil fuels, protect endangered forests and indigenous rights, and stop destructive investments through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action. For more information, please visit: www.ran.org
Founded in 1996, Amazon Watch is a non-profit environmental and human rights organization working to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin.
http://ran.org/content/rainforest-action-network-and-amazon-watch-statement-ecuador-court-ruling-against-chevron
| | Oil Giant In Corrupting Environmental Lawsuit | chevrontoxico - 16.02.2011 23:44
Amazon Defense Coalition
16 February 2011 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton,  karen@hintoncommunications.com or 703-798-3109
Caroline Bennett, caroline@amazonwatch.org or 510-520-9390
Federal Court Hears Arguments to Compel Chevron "Dirty Tricks" Operative Diego Borja to Testify Immediately on Charges He Assisted Oil Giant In Corrupting Environmental Lawsuit
San Francisco, CA – Today the Northern District Court of California will hear a motion by Ecuadorian plaintiffs to compel Chevron operative Diego Borja and his wife, Sara Portilla, to be deposed on charges Chevron, with their assistance, tried to corrupt a massive oil contaminatin lawsuit in Ecuador.
Chevron's self-described "clandestine" operations agent Borja has failed to comply with a U.S. federal court order to produce subpoenaed documents and schedule a day to testify on charges that he and his wife conspired with Chevron to submit tampered evidence to the Ecuadorian court hearing the lawsuit. (Hearing is in Judge Edward Chen's chambers at 3 pm PST.)
The oil giant has been paying Borja's legal expenses, a monthly retainer and all of his living expenses since the company arranged for him to leave Ecuador and move to San Ramon, California, in June 2009. Borja and Portilla recently left California and apparently moved to Texas. Portilla also worked for Chevron and for the U.S. lab that Chevron used to test for contamination in soil and water samples taken from well sites that the company operated.
Earlier this week the Ecuadorian court found Chevron guilty of the intentional dumping of oil and toxic water into the rainforest from 1964 to 1990 and ordered the company to pay $8.6 billion in damages. Borja and Portilla's testimony is needed for the plaintiffs' appeal of that decision and to fight other charges Chevron has brought in the U.S. against the plaintiffs.
Borja has said that Chevron "cooked evidence" submitted to the Ecuadorian court and that the oil giant promised to reward him by making him a "business partner" for videotapes he turned over to high-level Chevron executives in 2009. Chevron charged the videotapes proved the Ecuadorian judge, the plaintiffs and government officials had accepted bribes; however, nowhere on the tapes do any of the people accused by Chevron accept, much less, discuss a bribe. The government of Ecuador also has subpoenaed Borja and Borja's associate, Wayne Hansen who assisted in the videotaping, however, he cannot be located to serve the subpoena. Shortly after the release of the videotapes, Hansen was found to be a convicted drug felon.
In December, the Northern District Court of California denied Borja's motion to dismiss a government of Ecuador request to depose the Ecuadorian and ordered Borja to produce certain documents within 14 days and to testify in a deposition. Borja has failed to do both.
In briefs filed with the court, attorneys for the Ecuadorian government said: "... after forcing the Ecuadorian plaintiffs to litigate their claims in Ecuadorian courts, Chevron has done everything in its power to subvert the Ecuadorian Plaintiffs pursuit of justice there ... there is evidence that suggests Chevron has taken steps to ensure that Mr. Borja and Ms. Portilla do not remain within the reach of the Ecuadorian court."
Karen HInton, a spokesperson for the Ecuadorians suing Chevron, said, "It's clear that Chevron is assisting Mr. Borja in his attempts to evade the court order and avoid testifying about the company's misconduct both in Ecuador and the U.S." Chevron is paying the fees of a high-profile San Francisco attorney to represent Borja. His attorney, Chris Arguedes, has blocked all efforts to interview Borja about his work for Chevron.
Borja became a person of interest in the lawsuit after he was recorded last year bragging about his role in "cook(ing) evidence" for Chevron to hide illegal levels of toxic contamination and presiding over various "dirty tricks" to help the oil giant escape liability, including a video sting operation against a judge. Click here for more information.
http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/borja-report/
Portilla, who is Ecuadorian, also worked for Chevron in the Ecuador trial as part of the evidence-handling team and in setting up dummy corporations, according to legal papers.
In August 2009, Chevron released the videotapes to the news media and accused the judge of being involved in a bribery plot, even though the judge did not attend the meeting where Borja and Hansen offered a bribe and there was no evidence that the judge engaged in misconduct. The plaintiffs charged the tapes were part of a Nixon-style dirty tricks operation likely orchestrated by Chevron's lawyers in Ecuador and the United States.
Before Borja could be interviewed by Ecuadorian authorities investigating the bribery allegations, Chevron paid for his relocation to California
Since 2007, the plaintiffs have accused Chevron of evidence tampering in the trial. Borja confirmed the plaintiffs' charges when in taped conversations he admitted the company had "cooked evidence."
The tapes were made by Santiago Escobar, a childhood friend of Borja's who lives in Canada. They have been turned over to authorities in Ecuador and the United States.
Escobar had told journalists that Borja indicated to him that he has carried out a series of clandestine operations on behalf of Chevron's trial team in Ecuador over a series of years. In June 2009, Escobar said Borja told him he arranged "the biggest business deal of his life" that would "take down the lawsuit" and that he had received a "ton of money" from Chevron for his work.
http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2011/0216-federal-court-hears-arguments-to-compel-chevron-dirty-tricks-operative-diego-borja-to-testify.html
| | um | x - 17.02.2011 10:14
Um, je kunt ook een relevante quote plaatsen met een link naar de rest waar je op wou wijzen.
Korte samenvatting van waar je nou eigenlijk op wou wijzen kan ook geen kwaad.
Geen touw aan vast te knopen, dit soort samenraapsels van quotes en links zonder kop noch staart (en je ziet ze nogal vaak hier de laatste tijd). Misschien zegt het de poster wat, de lezer allicht minder.
| | ps | x - 17.02.2011 10:50
ps Dat vermelden als auteur als zijnde de eerste de beste die je aanhaalt begint ook danig te irriteren. Nee, natuurlijk heeft die dat hier niet geplaatst.
En voor alle duidelijkheid: Je hoeft echt geen stukken integraal te kopiëren. Lezen kunnen we allemaal wel als we dat willen, dus geef gewoon de bron, met een korte aanduiding waarom je dat de moeite vindt.
| | Breakdown of $8.6 Billion Chevron Judgment | Isabel Ordonez - 17.02.2011 23:40
A Breakdown of the $8.6 Billion Chevron Judgment
An Ecuador court ordered Chevron to pay about $8.6 billion in a long-running environmental legal battle involving the oil giant’s Texaco unit.
Residents of the country’s Amazon region have pursued an epic legal case against Texaco, suing it in the Lago Agrio Court as they seek to hold it responsible for billions of dollars of environmental damage they say it caused. Chevron inherited the suit when it bought Texaco in 2001, and has denied the allegations of environmental damage.
Here’s a breakdown of the amount of money, according to a copy of the verdict:
$5.39 billion – To restore polluted soil
$1.4 billion -_ To create a health system for the community
$800 million — To threat sick people affected by pollution
$600 million —To restore polluted sources of water
$200 million – To recover native species
$150 million –To transport water from other sites to supply community
$100 million —To create a community cultural reconstruction program
Total: $8.64 billion
Chevron said Monday: “The Ecuadorian court’s judgment is illegitimate and unenforceable …It is the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence. Chevron will appeal this decision in Ecuador and intends to see that justice prevails.”
FEBRUARY 14, 2011, 4:15 PM ET
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/02/14/a-breakdown-of-the-8-billion-chevron-judgment/
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FEBRUARY 14, 2011, 3:21 PM ET
Chevron Fined $8 Billion, But It’s Not Yet Reaching for Its Checkbook
By Ashby Jones
The long and winding saga between Ecuadorian plaintiffs and Chevron Corp. took another big bend in the road on Monday. An Ecuadorian court ordered the oil giant to pay $8 billion for contaminating a wide swath of Ecuador’s northern jungle. Click here for the WSJ story;
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703584804576144464044068664.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
here for the AP article.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_17385288?nclick_check=1
Residents of the country’s Amazon region have pursued a big legal case against Texaco — which was taken over by Chevron in 2001 — suing it in the Lago Agrio Court as they seek to hold it responsible for billions of dollars of environmental damage.
For now, it’s unclear what will become of the ruling.
The development follows an international arbitration panel last week ordering the South American country to temporarily suspend the enforcement of any potential judgments against Chevron. The company filed the arbitration in 2009 under international law, claiming Ecuador was violating the terms of a 1997 trade pact with the U.S. It has engaged in an aggressive legal campaign to thwart the effect of any adverse ruling by the Ecuadorian court.
“The Ecuadorian court’s judgment is illegitimate and unenforceable,” Chevron said Monday. “It is the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence. Chevron will appeal this decision in Ecuador and intends to see that justice prevails.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/02/14/ecuadorian-court-levies-8-billion-fine-against-chevron/
| | Chevron’s Ecuador Award ‘Unenforceable’ | Bloomberg - 18.02.2011 05:07
February 15, 2011, 2:32 PM EST - Joe Carroll and Karen Gullo
With assistance from Nathan Gill in Quito News and Thomas Black in Dallas.
Editors: Jessica Resnick-Ault, Susan Warren
Chevron’s Ecuador Award ‘Unenforceable,’ Analysts Say
Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil company, may never pay a cent of the award of more than $18 billion levied by an Ecuadorean court for environmental damage dating back to the 1960s.
Chevron doesn’t have any refineries, storage terminals, oil wells or other properties in Ecuador that could be seized to pressure the company to pay, said Mark Gilman, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in New York. In anticipation of an adverse ruling, Chevron went to court in New York last week to obtain an order temporarily shielding the company anywhere in the world from collection efforts related to the case.
The judgment handed down yesterday by a judge in Lago Agrio, a provincial capital near the Colombian border, ordered Chevron to pay $8.6 billion and an equal amount in punitive damages, according to the ruling obtained by Bloomberg. The judgment stemmed from an 18-year-old lawsuit that alleged Texaco Inc. dumped chemical-laden wastewater in the Amazon River basin from 1964 to 1992. Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001.
“It’s probably unenforceable,” Gilman said yesterday in a telephone interview. “I wouldn’t want to say $8 billion is insignificant in any way, shape or form for Chevron, because it’s not, but given the lack of local assets, Ecuador is going to have difficulty enforcing this.”
Luis Yanza, co-founder of the Amazon Defense Front, a group representing the Ecuadoreans who sued Chevron, said today the damage award should be higher and the plaintiffs will appeal the decision. He spoke on a conference call that was held by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in Spanish and translated into English.
‘Every Strategy’
If the judgment is upheld after the appeals process in Ecuador, the plaintiffs will “use every strategy and manner at our disposal” to enforce the damage award in the U.S. and elsewhere, Pablo Fajardo, their lead lawyer in Ecuador, said on the call.
International energy producers have been squeezed by Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s push to assert more control over natural resources, the U.S. Energy Department said in a report on its website. Correa is emulating Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in seeking redress for decades of dominance by foreign oil companies that reaped huge profits and paid little in return, said William Adams, a portfolio manager at Resilience AG in Zurich.
‘Business Case’
“It’s cheaper for Chevron to pay the lawyers than to pay for the lawsuit,” Adams said today in a telephone interview. “It’s a simple business case for them.”
The company, based in San Ramon, California, will be pardoned from paying the punitive damages if it issues a public apology in major newspapers within 15 days of the court’s decision, according to the ruling.
The court ordered the company to pay an additional 10 percent of the value of the compensatory damages, or about $860 million, to the Amazon Defense Front, according to the ruling. The organization is also the beneficiary of the trust fund that the court wants created to pay the damages.
Kent Robertson, a Chevron spokesman, said the company will appeal the judgment. Chevron attorneys were still poring over the document late yesterday to calculate the amount of damages imposed by the judge, he said.
‘Product of Fraud’
“One thing we do know is that this ruling was the product of fraud and is contrary to the legitimate scientific evidence,” Robertson said yesterday in a telephone interview.
Chevron had $17.1 billion in cash and near-cash equivalents at the end of December, according to a Jan. 28 statement. The company’s $195 billion market valuation is more than three times the size of Ecuador’s annual economic output.
Ecuador pumped an average of 470,000 barrels of crude a day last year, the lowest production among Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members, International Energy Agency figures showed. Crude accounts for about 50 percent of the nation’s export earnings, according the U.S. Energy Department.
Ecuador ranked 127th out of 178 nations in Transparency International’s 2010 corruption-perception index. Ethiopia, Indonesia and Armenia were perceived as less corrupt, according to the index.
The ruling held Chevron responsible for water and soil contamination that a court-ordered assessment estimated caused Amazon residents $27 billion in damages from illness, deaths and economic loss.
PetroEcuador Release
Chevron argued that it cleaned up its portion of the oil fields and was released from pollution claims in an agreement with Ecuador and state-owned oil company PetroEcuador, which took control of the Texaco operations in 1992.
“The case really sends a message that companies operating in the undeveloped world cannot rely on a compliant government or lax environmental rules as a way of permanently insulating themselves from liability,” said Robert Percival, a law professor and director of the environmental law program at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore.
The ruling may have prompted concern among some investors yesterday and served as a drag on Chevron’s stock price, Gilman said. Chevron’s 1.3 percent increase lagged behind peer companies such as ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp., which rose 3.1 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
Shares Underperform
“There was some degree of underperformance,” said Gilman, who has a “buy” rating on Chevron shares.
Chevron rose 33 percent in the past year. The stock has 18 buy ratings and seven holds.
The judgment ranks second in environmental damage cases behind the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility, a settlement fund set up for BP Plc’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, said Percival.
“Today’s judgment affirms what the plaintiffs have contended for the past 18 years about Chevron’s intentional and unlawful contamination of Ecuador’s rainforest,” Fajardo said in an e-mailed statement.
Chevron accused the Ecuadorean government of unfairly influencing the court proceedings and alleged that a $27 billion damage assessment provided by a court-appointed expert was ghostwritten by consultants and lawyers hired by the plaintiffs.
Documentary Film
The company won U.S. court orders last year that forced attorneys and consultants for the Ecuadoreans to answer questions under oath about the case and gave Chevron access to outtakes of a documentary film about the lawsuit.
Chevron in February filed a racketeering lawsuit against the lawyers and the plaintiffs in federal court in Manhattan for “leading a fraudulent litigation and PR campaign against the company.” The company filed a claim in 2009 against Ecuador in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague seeking orders that it has no liability for the environmental pollution and PetroEcuador should pay the damage award.
The case is Maria Aguinda v Chevron, 002-2003, Superior Court of Nueva Loja, Lago Agrio, Ecuador.
Exxon Mobil, based in Irving, Texas, is the biggest U.S. oil company.
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http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-02-15/chevron-s-ecuador-award-unenforceable-analysts-say.html
| | The Case Against Chevron in Ecuador | NACLA - 18.02.2011 05:40
The Case Against Chevron in Ecuador
In 1993, a class action suit was brought by residents of areas of the Ecuadorian Amazon where Texaco, later bought by Chevron Corp, operated oil drilling and refining activities from 1964 to 1992. The suit alleges that Texaco dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into unlined pits, rivers, and streams here, that remediation efforts were shoddy at best, and that the health and environmental damages were massive. An independent court-appointed expert in Ecuador recommended that the plaintiffs in the case be awarded some $27 billion dollars in damages, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, would be the biggest environmental ruling against an oil company to date.
NACLA Director Christy Thornton is joined by Joe Berlinger, the director of the award-winning new documentary on the case, Crude, which will open in New York in September; and Eric Bloom, an attorney for the Republic of Ecuador and its state-owned oil company, Petroecuador.
https://nacla.org/files/media/WUC72409Ecuador.mp3
https://nacla.org/radio
| | CRUDE Director Must Hand Over Raw Footage | Lee O. NL Messi - 18.02.2011 07:32
Berlinger Receives Final Court Order from Appeals Court
July 16th, 2010
As you may have read over the last 24 hours, late yesterday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit modified a lower court order that had required CRUDE’s director Joe Berlinger to turn over all of his raw film footage to Chevron Corp. Please see below for a compilation of some of the most recent articles on the court’s decision and read the order.
http://www.crudethemovie.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/7.15.10-ORDER.pdf
Berlinger’s attorney Maura Wogan says that “while we await the appeals court’s formal legal opinion on the journalist’s privilege, this interim order does substantially limit Judge Kaplan’s decision and place restrictions on Chevron,” interpreting this verdict as a “win for Joe Berlinger, journalists, and documentarians everywhere,” as the lower court order would have required Berlinger to produce more than 600 hours of raw film footage, whereas under the appeals court order, Berlinger will produce only unused footage that falls into specific categories.
Berlinger articulates a similar sense of victory, stating:
“Since the court issued its order without yet a corresponding opinion, I must reserve my full analysis of the results until the three-judge panel’s opinion is rendered. However, I can say that we are extremely pleased with today’s results. The appeals court has substantially limited Judge Kaplan’s overbroad order, which was the main thrust of our appeal. Furthermore, the court has expressly prohibited Chevron from using any footage we do turn over in their public relations campaigns, a goal that was extremely important to me.
I am gratified that by adhering to the basic standards of the journalist’s privilege articulated in the previous precedent setting case Gonzalez vs. NBC, the appeals court for the Second Circuit has affirmed that documentary filmmakers are no different than any other journalists deserving First Amendment protection.
I am deeply grateful for the tremendous outpouring of support that the artistic, filmmaking, legal, media and journalist communities have shown towards this case in the past three months. It was precisely this support that gave me and my legal team at Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz the strength to stand up for these very important foundations of American democracy.”
We thank you once more for your persistence interest, passion, and support throughout this monumental fight.
-Joe Berlinger & Team CRUDE
http://www.crudethemovie.com/crude-blog/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_(2009_film)
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http://www.democracynow.org/images/story/73/18773/crude-film-berlinger.jpg
Court Orders Documentary Filmmaker to Hand Ecuador Footage to Chevron
May 10, 2010
http://media.libsyn.com/media/democracynow/dn2010-0510-1.mp3
Last week a federal court in Manhattan ordered a documentary filmmaker to hand over to Chevron hundreds of hours of footage. Joseph Berlinger’s award-winning film, Crude: The Real Price of Oil, chronicles the struggle of indigenous Ecuadorians against ChevronTexaco’s oil contamination of their land. It focuses on the seventeen-year legal battle between Chevron and 30,000 Ecuadorians who say their land, rivers, wells, livestock and bodies were poisoned by decades of reckless oil drilling in the rainforest. Chevron has sought Berlinger’s outtakes to help defend itself against an Ecuadorian lawsuit seeking $27 billion in environmental damages.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/10/court_orders_documentary_filmmaker_to_hand
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