2,000 Lawyers Failed To Block Chevron CEO John Watson From Court Deposition On Ecuador Case

After spending hundreds of millions of dollars for 2,000 lawyers and legal assistants to fight a group of impoverished Ecuadorian indigenous people in a historic oil contamination lawsuit, Chevron's CEO and Chairman of the Board John Watson will finally have to answer questions under oath about the environmental crimes committed by an oil company he recommended Chevron purchase. 

This, of course, assumes that U.S. Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has sought to stop the Ecuadorians from enforcing their judgment, does not overrule a magistrate judge's decision issued yesterday, allowing the deposition to go forward. 

As the architect of the plan to purchase Texaco in 2001, Watson knew about Texaco's admission that it had dumped 16 billion gallons of toxic production water into the Ecuador rainforest's waterways. He knew about the 900 unlined pits that Texaco built to store pure crude. He knew about the internal audits Texaco conducted that showed massive contamination.  Yet, he pushed the merger and, as a result, inherited the largest environmental lawsuit in the world's history and urged a trial in Ecuador, only later to cry foul when he, his lawyers and his private investigative firm, Kroll, failed to undermine the Ecuadorian judicial system. 

It is about time that Chevron's highest ranking officer speak to the injustices that Texaco committed and Chevron tried to hide in Ecuador's rainforest.

Below is a statement issued by the Ecuadorians who won a $19 billion judgment against Chevron and are seeking to enforce that judgment in Argentina, Canada, Brazil and Ecuador.

JUDGE ORDERS CHEVRON CEO TO ANSWER QUESTIONS

ABOUT COMPANY’S BRIBERY AND TOXIC DESTRUCTION

IN ECUADOR’S AMAZON REGION

Kroll official also must answer questions about Chevron bribery

Chevron CEO John S. Watson, who perhaps more than anyone knew about the grim history of deliberate and negligent dumping of oil and toxic chemicals by his company into the soil and streams of Ecuador’s Amazon region, will not escape his day in court. 

A magistrate appointed in the long running lawsuit brought by Chevron in New York in the aftermath of a $19 billion judgment against the company in Ecuador ruled today that Watson must be deposed by the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case.   He likely will be deposed later this month.

“There is little doubt that Mr. Watson has relevant knowledge,” said Magistrate James Francis, noting that Watson led the company’s successful merger of with Texaco in 2002, well after the suit was filed by indigenous Ecuadorians.  Their lands and livelihoods were disrupted and health endangered by Texaco’s dumping billions of gallons of waste in the Amazon valley of northern Ecuador over more than 30 years.  The ruling is here.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV denied motions by Chevron to block depositions of Watson and also from an official from the corporate spy firm Kroll, which was implicated in a bribery scheme in which an attorney from Chevron and an unnamed Kroll official provided a cache of cash to a corrupt provincial judge in Ecuador, Alberto Guerra, paying him for a failed effort to influence the judge who ultimately decided the case and assessed the huge judgment against the oil company.  A recorded transcript of that meeting can be found here and a news release recounting it here.

The lawyer, Andres Rivero, and the corporate investigator brought $20,000 – the Kroll official called it “money that's in the suitcase” --to pay Guerra for testimony against the plaintiffs, as revealed in recordings made by a Kroll operative in Ecuador and attached to a recent motion filed in the court in New York.    That meeting occurred on July 13, 2012, in Quito.

Judge Francis also found that an unnamed official for the oil and gas division of Kroll also must appear for depositions.  It was an uncommon victory for the plaintiffs in the New York case where presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan has kept his thumb heavily on the scale on behalf of the oil company, said Pablo Fajardo, lead counsel for the Ecuadorians who brought the case.  “Now CEO Watson and Kroll’s investigator can confirm what we already know:  that Chevron’s bullying and bribery  is part of a strategy hatched in Ecuador even before the ruling to avoid paying for remediation and the health and other needs of the affected people,” Fajardo said.

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Dumb Chevron Lawyer Tapes Himself Offering A Bribe In Ecuador

Chevron apparently got caught with its hand in the cookie jar again in its long-running campaign to weasel out of its $19 billion legal obligation in Ecuador.

Only this time the company tripped all over itself, producing a tape in federal court made by company lawyer Andres Rivero that can only be described as staggering in its stupidity.

This might keep the fraud division of the U.S. Department of Justice at least a little busy for the next few weeks.

The tape shows that Rivero brought a suitcase full of cash to Quito to pay off an Ecuador judge in exchange for favorable testimony. See this explosive press release here, which is also copied below in full.

We previously reported that in 2011 the oil giant offered a $1 billion bribe to Ecuador’s government to illegally quash the lawsuit. The judgment was based on overwhelming scientific evidence that Chevron deliberately dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest.

We now know that Chevron tried to pay $20,000 to an American journalist to spy on the plaintiffs, has conducted espionage surveillance to intimidate New York lawyer Steven Donziger, has threatened Ecuador judges with jail time, has tried to extort testimony from scientific consultants in the U.S., and has paid more than $2 million to an Ecuadorian operative to try to entrap Ecuadorian judges in a bribery scandal.

Of course, that’s on top of Chevron’s admission that it dumped 16 billion gallons of benzene-laden “water of formation” into the rivers and streams of the Amazon and then lied about the resulting financial risk to its shareholders, which prompted calls for an SEC investigation, which prompted a shareholder revolt last year against CEO John Watson which almost cost him his job.

These guys never seem to learn. Rivero and a Chevron operative named Sam Anson were outed earlier this year by an Ecuadorian newspaper for trying to intimidate and buy off judges in Ecuador. This is happening as the oil company desperately tries to beat back asset seizure actions in Canada, Brazil, and Argentina related to its refusal to pay the Ecuador judgment.

Please delight in reading about the details of this latest Chevron bribery scandal courtesy of Rivero, a Miami-based former prosecutor who, no doubt, has been paid millions by Chevron to risk his career for the company.

Andres, please let us know as soon as possible whether you think this assignment was worth it.

Here is the link to the press release on CSR Wire. A longer version follows below:

Chevron Offered Suitcase Full of Cash to Ecuador Judge In Exchange for Testimony, Documents Reveal

PRESS RELEASE/Fenton Communications
Contact: Bill Hamilton, bill@fenton.com
Phone: 202.641.0350/202.789.7755
Posted: May 1, 2013

New York, New York -- An American lawyer working for Chevron brought a suitcase full of cash to a meeting with a former Ecuador judge in an apparent attempt to bribe him for favorable testimony to help the oil giant evade its $19 billion Ecuador judgment, an explosive new court filing from the oil company reveals.

A Chevron investigator taped the meeting between Chevron lawyer Andres Rivero and Ecuador Judge Alberto Guerra, which took place in Ecuador’s capital of Quito in July of 2012. Chevron recently filed a transcript of the meeting in U.S. federal court as part of the company’s discovery obligations in a related “fraud” case brought by Chevron against the Ecuadorians.

Rivero, a former federal prosecutor, says on tape that he brought to the meeting $20,000 cash in “money that's in the suitcase” to pay Guerra for allegations that the Ecuador plaintiffs were involved in the writing of the judgment in the case. When asked by Rivero if $20,000 was enough, Guerra replied “Couldn’t we add a couple of zeroes to that?”

In an earlier court filing, Chevron admitted it ended up paying Guerra $38,000 for the information plus over $300,000 more for “protection” and “expenses” including relocation to the U.S. – or about ten times the annual salary of a judge in Ecuador and well in excess of Guerra’s $500 per month in expenses he admits to incurring.

Lawyers for the Ecuadorians called the cash offering further proof that Chevron was paying bribes in Ecuador for false testimony and said Chevron should be investigated for violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and federal witness tampering statutes. The U.S. Department of Justice previously fined Chevron after finding it violated the FCPA in Iraq.

“We’ve always known that Chevron can only bully and bribe its way to favorable testimony but now we have even more undisputed evidence of this malfeasance,” added Pablo Fajardo, lead counsel for the plaintiffs in Ecuador. “Ethical corporations don’t send their people to meetings carrying suitcases stuffed with cash.”

Worse still for Chevron, Guerra admitted in the transcript that he recently had been made sick by drinking water from a well “polluted with oil” from areas of Ecuador’s Amazon that Chevron has refused to properly remediate.

Chevron’s transcript also corroborates a recent affidavit from Ecuador Judge Nicolas Zambrano, who authored the judgment against Chevron. Judge Zambrano declared under oath that Chevron had used Guerra as a conduit to offer him a $1 million bribe to lie and testify against the rainforest communities.

In the transcript, a person identified as Chevron “Investigator #5” told Guerra “you get yours when a deal is reached with Zambrano”. The operative also admitted he offered to fly Zambrano out of the country to meet “a very high ranking person from Chevron” if he could come up with sufficiently damaging information to help undermine the judgment.

“Guerra is Chevron’s kind of witness,” said Craig Smyser of Houston, attorney for the Ecuadorians in the New York case. “The kind whose only question to the company is: how much will you pay me?”
“Chevron’s lies are coming back to haunt them,” said Fajardo. “This rogue company thinks it can bribe anyone in Ecuador to avoid paying for cleaning up our land but we will hold them accountable for the mess they left behind.”

Rivero himself has been under fire for serving as Chevron’s point person in a far-reaching espionage campaign organized by the private investigations service Kroll and exposed by a Quito-based newspaper, El Telegrafo. The El Telegrafo articles found that Chevron is using Rivero, a Kroll operative named Sam Anson, and an investigator named Yohi Ackerman "as secret agents" in Ecuador to "intimidate" former judges, government officials, and technical workers who were either involved in the eight-year Ecuador trial or are in a position to lie about the extent of oil contamination in the Amazon region.

Rivero was deposed about these and other issues last week under federal court order, but it is unclear if Chevron will make the transcript available or if the company will move to seal it from public scrutiny.

These latest revelations are not the first evidence of Chevron’s bribery attempts in Ecuador. Information surfaced in late 2011 in The Huffington Post that Chevron offered $1 billion to an Ecuadorian government official in exchange for an agreement that the environmental case would be quashed before a final judgment was reached. Sam Anson, featured in the El Telegrafo expose, was previously caught offering a $20,000 bribe to an American journalist to spy on lawyers for the plaintiffs, according to a report in The Atlantic.

“Chevron’s lies are coming back to haunt them,” claimed Javier Piaguaje, one of the Ecuadorian plaintiffs who is contesting Chevron’s fraud claims in Federal Court in New York. “This rogue company thinks it can bribe anyone in Ecuador to avoid paying for cleaning up our ancestral lands.”

“No matter how Chevron tries to spin this, law-abiding corporations simply don’t send their lawyers to meet with former judges carrying suitcases full of cash,” added Graham Erion, a US-trained corporate attorney who advises the rainforest communities in Ecuador on shareholder issues. “This transcript is just another embarrassing revelation for Chevron’s management team that is already facing the threat of strategic asset seizures in Brazil, Argentina and Canada.

“Chevron’s current management team is dragging the company’s brand through Ecuador’s oil-soaked mud, and lying about it to shareholders,” he added.


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More Revelations About Chevron’s Paid Witness & Its Miami Lawyer, Andres Rivero

Chevron not only is lying to a U.S. court about what happened in the historic Ecuadorian trial that the oil giant lost, it also offered a $1 million bribe to turn evidence against the Ecuadorians and their lawyers, testified an Ecuador judge in a legal declaration filed yesterday in the Southern District Court of New York.

Ecuador Judge Nicolás Zambrano, who found Chevron guilty in February 2011 of the world’s largest oil-related environmental disaster, submitted the filing to the U.S. court, in response to false charges brought by Chevron that Zambrano allowed the Ecuadorians’ lawyers to write his judgment for payment.

Zambrano said in his declaration that only he wrote the detailed 188-page ruling, documenting the extensive contamination of Chevron’s substandard drilling and exploratory system wrought upon the environment and the impoverished indigenous people living near the pollution. Chevron has argued that Zambrano was incapable of writing such a judgment and has entered into evidence testimony by another judge, Alberto Guerra, that the real authors are the Ecuadorians’ lawyers, charges that the lawyers deny.

Only problem is Guerra has been paid at least $324,000 for his testimony and likely will be paid much, much more, given the unbelievable agreement Chevron has negotiated with Guerra, who now lives in Miami with his family and his son’s family – all at Chevron’s expense.

Importantly, Chevron’s own lawyers have admitted that Guerra actually approached Chevron in 2009 about writing the judgment in its favor if they would pay him.

Not surprisingly, about that time, Guerra announced publicly that he thought the lawsuit against Chevron was not legitimate, even though the trial was underway.

Also underway at the same time was a Chevron sting operation to derail the trial by staging a phony bribery attempt against yet another judge who heard the case. It failed miserably, but Chevron spent much of the year organizing it and publicizing its sensational but false allegations of bribes. 

At no time in 2009, 2010 and 2011, during years of hysterically wild accusations of corruption and fraud charged by Chevron, did the oil giant breathe a word about Guerra offering to write the judgment for Chevron for money.

If Chevron wanted to prove that the Ecuador courts were corrupt, here was its perfect opportunity. Yet, Chevron’s lawyers, not known for avoiding a media interview in Quito, were silent.

Now Zambrano reveals that Guerra as Chevron's proxy approached him in August 2012 with an offer to turn evidence against the Ecuadorians’ lawyers for $1 million or as much money as Zambrano might want.

Zambrano rejected the offer then and later avoided overtures in January 2013 by Chevron lawyer Andres Rivero who called Zambrano and urged a meeting. Zambrano refused.

The 20-year-old case, now being litigated to seize Chevron's assets in Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Ecuador as payment for the judgment, continues to take twists and turns in the U.S., both sides slinging charges fast and furious.

But, there are two charges that even Chevron cannot deny: 

One: Chevron’s man, Alberto Guerra, is as corrupt as the day is long.

And, two: Texaco, which Chevron bought, dumped 16 billion gallons of toxic water and oil directly into the rainforest waterways and built 900 unlined pits and filled them with pure crude that has leeched into soil and underground water -- all because it wanted to save money. Chevron's company treated the rainforest like a garbage dump and its people as disposable as the toxic oil it left behind.

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