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  Mayor Pursues Chevron in Ecuador
September 19, 2013
 
 


Incidentally, Mayor McLaughlin is not on City business in Ecuador, nor is the City paying any of her expenses.

Take a good look at the photo below of Mayor McLaughlin in Lago Agrio, Sucumbios, Ecuador, at one of the 880 unlined, pit dumping sites in the Ecuadorian Amazon that Chevron-Texaco maintains they have no responsibility to clean up.

https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1003922_10151907453000833_1203524940_n.jpg

In fact, on the same day the photo was taken, Chevron issued a press release International Arbitration Tribunal Finds Chevron Not Liable for Environmental Claims in Ecuador (see below), which touts a “partial award in favor of Chevron” apparently based on some technicality of a previous agreement with the government of Ecuador. Nowhere in the press release does Chevron deny the existence of the un-remediated dump sites or Chevron’s complicity in causing the problem.

Doria Robinson writes:

The case in question is not between the government and Chevron but a group of indigenous people and Chevron.

I am told that the "international tribunal" is organized by multinational corporations and usually finds in favor of multinational corporations against governments (especially those of the global south). This is not the Hague, but Chevron would like for everyone to believe that it is. 

The lawyers who won the case in Ecuadorian court told us tonight they are unfazed and that this judgment does not pertain to them or their case. They believe it is a scare tactic to pressure the Ecuadorian government so that they pressure the Union of Affected Peoples (the plaintiffs) to drop their effort to get Chevron to pay up.

There is more to the story ... so much more hard to share all of the details...

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Court_of_Arbitration, which notes “Hearings are rarely open to the public and sometimes even the decision itself is kept confidential at the request of the parties. Many decisions and related documents are available on the PCA website.”

 

http://www.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/13/130102/email_h.jpg

 

Chevron has added a news release to its Investor Relations website.
Title: International Arbitration Tribunal Finds Chevron Not Liable for Environmental Claims in Ecuador

Date(s): 18 Sep. 2013 8:00 AM

For a complete listing of our news releases, please click here
SAN RAMON, Calif., September 18, 2013 - An international arbitration tribunal yesterday issued a Partial Award in favor of Chevron (NYSE: CVX) and its subsidiary, Texaco Petroleum Company (TexPet).  The Tribunal found that the Settlement and Release Agreements that the government of Ecuador entered into with TexPet released TexPet and its affiliates of any liability for all public interest or collective environmental claims. The Lago Agrio plaintiffs' lawyers have repeatedly admitted, and the relief in the Lago Agrio judgment makes clear, that their claims are exclusively collective and not individual. The arbitration stems from the government of Ecuador's interference in the ongoing environmental lawsuit against the company and its courts' failure to administer justice in a trial that has been marred by multiple instances of fraud.

"The game is up. This award by an eminent international tribunal confirms that the fraudulent claims against Chevron should not have been brought in the first place. It is now beyond question that efforts by American plaintiffs lawyers and the government of Ecuador to enforce this fraudulent judgment violate Ecuadorian, U.S., and international law," said Hewitt Pate, Chevron vice president and general counsel. "Continuing to support this fraud only increases the government of Ecuador's growing liability to Chevron and we urge Ecuador to reconsider its position and pursue a more responsible course."

Convened under the authority of the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty and administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, the Tribunal found that the Settlement and Release Agreements that the Government of Ecuador entered into with TexPet in 1995 and 1998 released TexPet and its affiliates of any liability for all public interest or collective environmental claims. In its decision, the Tribunal found that: 1) Chevron and TexPet are "Releasees" under the 1995 Settlement Agreement and the 1998 Final Release; 2) Chevron can invoke and enforce its contractual rights as a Releasee; and 3) the Government settled all public interest or collective environmental claims, including collective claims asserted by third parties.

This Award comes after the Tribunal's February 2013 finding that Ecuador is in breach of its obligation to "take all measures necessary to suspend or cause to be suspended the enforcement" of the Lago Agrio judgment--an obligation that the Tribunal had imposed on Ecuador in 2011, and reinforced and expanded in 2012, but which Ecuador has continuously ignored. In prior rulings, the Tribunal put the Republic of Ecuador on notice that if Chevron's arbitration ultimately prevails, "any loss arising from the enforcement of (the judgment) may be losses for which the (Republic) would be responsible to (Chevron) under international law."

The next arbitration hearing regarding the collusion between the Ecuadorian courts and the Lago Agrio plaintiffs and their lawyers is scheduled for January 2014.

Chevron filed the international arbitration claim against the government of Ecuador on September 23, 2009, claiming violations of Ecuador's obligations under the United States-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, investment agreements, and international law. Chevron's subsidiary, TexPet, participated until 1992 as a minority member of a consortium that explored for and produced oil under contracts with Ecuador and Ecuador's government-owned oil company, Petroecuador. Through the arbitration, Chevron seeks to hold Ecuador accountable for the denial of justice that occurred through the Lago Agrio court's actions during the litigation and the issuance of the fraudulent $19 billion judgment.

Chevron Corporation is one of the world's leading integrated energy companies, with subsidiaries that conduct business worldwide. The company is involved in virtually every facet of the energy industry. Chevron Corporation's subsidiaries explore for, produce and transport crude oil and natural gas; refine, market and distribute transportation fuels and lubricants; manufacture and sell petrochemical products; generate power and produces geothermal energy; provide energy efficiency solutions; and develop the energy resources of the future, including biofuels. Chevron Corporation is based in San Ramon, California. More information about Chevron is available at www.chevron.com.
Contact:
Morgan Crinklaw
+1 (925) 336-6415
mkwz@chevron.com

Jim Craig
+1 (832) 794-1630
jgzh@chevron.com
Mayor McLaughlin and Doria Robinson, director of Richmond’s Urban Tilth met with some of the attorneys and the indigenous people who are suing Chevron. It’s a bit of a David and Goliath effort, with five lawyers and 46 indigenous people from the Ecuadorian Rainforest against Chevron's 200 lawyers and billions of dollars in profits.

While Chevron is protesting what it claims is fraud and collusion by the plaintiffs in the initial claim, Chevron is also pursuing a RICO lawsuit in U.S. courts. However, attorneys for the indigenous peoples say they have clear evidence of a “pattern of misconduct and corruption by offering illicit payments and outright bribes to secure favorable testimony” by Chevron. See http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/36107-Chevron-Tried-to-Bribe-Ecuador-Judge-with-1-Million-Payment-on-Eve-of-RICO-Trial. Also see:

CSR Press Release
Chevron Tried to Bribe Ecuador Judge with $1 Million Payment on Eve of RICO Trial
Terminating Sanctions Sought Against Oil Giant for Corrupting U.S. Proceedings
http://admin.csrwire.com/system/profile_logos/16803/normal/gowengroup.jpg

Submitted by: Gowen Group Law Office, PLLC
Categories: Environment, Corporate Social Responsibility
Posted: Sep 13, 2013 – 11:53 AM EST
NEW YORK, Sep. 13 /CSRwire/ - In a move that could end Chevron’s RICO trial before it starts, Ecuadorian villagers and their lawyer have turned over proof to a U.S. court that the oil giant has engaged in a “pattern of misconduct and corruption” by offering illicit payments and outright bribes to secure favorable testimony.
The filing says Chevron’s unlawful payments and bribes to witnesses “have so damaged the integrity” of the proceedings that a fair trial based on competent evidence has become impossible. The defendants asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to sanction Chevron by terminating the case.
“When the conduct is this egregious, there is simply no other way to ensure justice than to end the entire proceeding,” said Christopher Gowen, an attorney and spokesman who is advising the Ecuadorians and their attorney, Steven R. Donziger.
One of the illicit payments – in the amount of $1 million -- was offered as a bribe to the Ecuador judge who wrote the opinion finding Chevron liable for $19 billion in damages for dumping toxic waste into the rainforest. The bribe was intended to coax the judge, Nicolas Zambrano, into renouncing his own ruling which was based on a 220,000-page evidentiary record accumulated over an eight-year trial, according to a sworn affidavit cited in the motion.
Zambrano intends to testify about the bribe offer in the RICO case should it proceed to trial as scheduled in mid-October, according to a recent court filing. Chevron filed the RICO action in New York federal court as a last-ditch attempt to thwart the Ecuador court judgment; the company was also countersued for fraud and extortion by Donziger, who has advised the Ecuadorians for two decades. (A summary of the overwhelming evidence against Chevron as found by the Ecuador court can be read here.)
The latest filing asks Judge Kaplan “to put an end to Chevron and its counsel Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s intentional and unrelenting pattern of misconduct to corrupt this proceeding with illegal and unethical payments” to witnesses. Absent terminating sanctions, the Ecuadorians and Donziger want the judge to exclude the testimony of at least four key Chevron witnesses.
A summary of the evidence of Chevron’s illegal payments and bribes as outlined in the last motion is as follows:
**Chevron lawyer Andres Rivero and another Chevron agent known as “Investigator #5” used a former Ecuadorian judge and key Chevron witness (Alberto Guerra) as a conduit to offer the $1 million bribe to Zambrano, whose sworn affidavit is available here. Rivero recorded himself paying Guerra thousands of dollars in cash out of a suitcase during a secret meeting in Ecuador. Guerra presided over the case for three months in 2003.
**Chevron signed a contract guaranteeing Guerra payments at least ten times his annual salary as an Ecuadorian judge in exchange for false testimony where he claims the Ecuadorian plaintiffs bribed him. The exorbitant payments were arranged directly in a meeting in Chicago by Randy Mastro, Chevron’s lead outside counsel at the law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. Mastro’s practice group already has been sanctioned once by a federal judge in the case for engaging in unethical conduct.
**The filing asserts that the benefits given to Guerra constitute criminal violations that run afoul of the Federal Anti-Gratuity Statute, which prohibits payments to non-expert witnesses for testimony. The argument that the payments to Guerra are illegal is supported by a sworn affidavit provided by Erwin Chemerinsky, a prominent ethics expert and Dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine.
**The motion documents that Chevron, by its own admission, not only paid Guerra cash from a suitcase but moved his entire family to the United States; promised him an annual salary of $144,000, or roughly 30 times the per capita annual income in Ecuador; has provided him a car, health insurance, cell phones, a housing allowance, and payments for travel expenses and an immigration lawyer who happens to be none other than Ira Kurzbam, former President of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Chevron appears to be helping Guerra seek political asylum in the U.S. under false pretenses, said Donziger.
**The motion also outlines $2.2 million in payments and “hush money” Chevron made to employee Diego Borja. Borja, who worked for Chevron’s legal team in Ecuador since 2004, has admitted on tape that he was the company’s “dirty tricks” operative during the Ecuador trial. He also admitted he tried to entrap a sitting judge in a bribery scandal, set up dummy companies, and that he and his wife ran a supposedly independent laboratory actually controlled by Chevron. For background on Chevron’s attempts to corrupt the Ecuador trial through Borja, see here.
**Chevron also used “coercion and the threat of financial ruin” to blackmail two U.S. scientists, Douglas Beltman and Ann Maest, into disavowing their prior sworn testimony that the oil company is responsible for extensive toxic pollution in Ecuador. Chevron even contacted clients of Stratus to falsely claim that the company had been found to have committed “fraud” in Ecuador as a way to pressure the scientists to “flip” to Chevron’s side.
**Chevron also engaged in witness tampering by coercing Christopher Bogart – a former financial backer of the Ecuadorians who runs a litigation hedge fund – to submit a false affidavit claiming he was misled about key parts of the underlying case. Bogart already has been discredited as a liar in a separate court filing that seeks to exclude his testimony.
Chevron’s illegal payments have made it impossible to proceed to trial based on competent evidence with the witnesses in question, according to the motion. The motion cites detailed legal precedent for the request to terminate the case.
“Chevron’s RICO case is weakening due to the company’s corrupt and unethical conduct,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuador lawyer for the team that won the judgment against Chevron.
The latest filing comes at a time when Chevron is reeling over the risk posed by its own RICO allegations given the obvious credibility problems of its witnesses. The company appears “utterly desperate” to avoid a jury of impartial fact finders, said Gowen.
Just days ago, Chevron said it likely would drop billions of dollars in damages claims so it could avoid a jury trial Chevron instead wants the case decided by Judge Kaplan, who has a long record of bias against the Ecuadorian villagers and earlier was unanimously reversed in the case by an appeals court when he tried to impose an illegal injunction blocking worldwide enforcement of the Ecuador judgment. In a series of recent procedural rulings, Judge Kaplan seems intent on empaneling a jury.
Judge Kaplan is now the target of a rare removal proceeding that will be heard in late September before a New York federal appellate court. That proceeding could derail the trial, which has become the centerpiece of Chevron’s public relations and legal strategy. In the meantime, to pay for a clean-up of their ancestral lands, the Ecuadorians are pursuing billions of dollars of Chevron’s assets in the courts of Canada, Brazil, and Argentina.
The motion also cites the misconduct of Chevron lawyers at the Gibson Dunn law firm who have a track record of presenting false or misleading testimony to U.S. courts on behalf of their corporate clients. The motion asks that the counsel at Gibson Dunn who have been involved in the misconduct, including Mastro, Andrea Neumann and Scott Edelman, be sanctioned as well.
Further damaging Chevron’s prospects, earlier this week Judge Kaplan denied a request to bifurcate the RICO trial into separate proceedings so that Donziger and his clients could not appear side by side. Chevron has a long term strategy to isolate and “demonize” Donziger, a human rights lawyer who has played an instrumental role in the historic 20-year legal battle to hold Chevron accountable for its toxic dumping in Ecuador. Chevron has sued him in the RICO action for close to $60 billion (or three times the amount of the Ecuador judgment plus costs) on the grounds the entire case in Ecuador is a sham, even though the two layers of courts have found against the oil company based on tens of thousands of chemical sampling results.
For more background, see this 60 Minutes segment and this video explaining Chevron’s contamination in Ecuador. This article on The Huffington Post also describes the human suffering caused by Chevron’s contamination.
For more information, please contact:
Christopher Gowen
Phone: 202.380.9355

Below, Mayor McLaughlin meeting with indigenous Ecuadorians and their attorneys.
Photo: These are some of the folks who won the $15 billion court case against Chevron.   5 lawyers and 46 indigenous people from the Ecuadorian Rainforest against Chevron's 200 lawyers and billions of dollars in profits.   These are the folks who will not be scared off - even with Chevron  bringing a RICO case (being heard in NYC on Oct 15th) against THEM!!??  (the 5 lawyers and 46 indigenous) as if these people were the Mafia, and not Chevron.   Epic.  David vs. Goliath.

Doria Robinson writes:

The photo of Gayle and the other two Mayors with oil on their hands was taken at one of the 880 unlined, pit dumping sites in the Ecuadorian Amazon that Chevron-Texaco said they "cleaned" up.

It is above a tributary to one of the primary rivers running through this region of the Amazon and has been leeching oil and other contaminates into the water supply for over 40 years. 

There was a wall full of files and files records (evidence) in the lawyers' office tonight documenting that Texaco was in fact responsible and Chevron in purchasing Texaco took on their liabilities.

Originally Chevron lobbied to have the case removed from the New York court and brought to Ecuador. During this time the new left liberal President won office. When Chevron won their request to move the case to Ecuador they found a whole new regime no longer beholden or afraid of the oil company. The case was heard. Chevron lost. Chevron claimed corruption. Moved all their assets out of the country and refused to pay. All while they tried to bride two judges both instances were caught on tape. 

It really goes on and on... they are now claiming the group of indigenous folks who are the plaintiffs are a Mafia and have brought a RICO suit against them. I met them tonight, they are ex-oil field workers, bus drivers, mothers and leaders in their individual communities. 

Chevron believes they are above the law, that their money, and the influence it buys, can buy them justice as they define it. 

They can call Correa a dictator when the people here love him, he is building roads, airports, health care and education systems and supporting the plight of the indigenous people even while on the pressure of having oil be the countries #1 export. 70% GDP. No one is perfect and that especially goes for national level politicians. 

But Chevron's claims and assertions are just flat out lies.

 

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