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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Chevron's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Thriller -- Even Better Than The Movie

Chevron is spying on the two lead attorneys for the Ecuadorians to intimidate and harass them,reports the Amazon Defense Coalition. The lawyers, Pablo Fajardo and Steven Donziger, helped the Ecuadorians win an $18 billion judgment against the company for massive oil contamination. See press release here.

During an eight-year trial in Ecuador, Chevron has operated a corporate espionage campaign out of its San Ramon, California and Quito offices, hiring no less than four private investigative firms to carry out various plots in an effort to derail the lawsuit, but with no success.

In January, an Ecuador appellate court upheld the lower court's $18 billion judgment for what is considered to be the world's largest oil-related environmental disaster. Under Ecuador law, the Ecuadorians may enforce the judgment now, but they will have to do so in other countries' court systems because Chevron has refused to pay and has sold its major assets in Ecuador.

A private investigator hired by the Ecuadorians told the two lawyers he has seen tapes of Donziger under surveillance, and another said he watched individuals in cars follow Donziger and his family in New York City, where they live. The license plates indicated the cars had been rented.

In Ecuador, Fajardo was physically assaulted by two individuals who said they were serving legal papers on him on Chevron's behalf, even though Ecuador does not "serve" papers, as in the United States. Other Ecuadorian lawyers and staff have reported that they are being followed and have had backpacks and other items stolen.

This is not the first time this has happened. The United Nations directed Ecuador to provide security for the Ecuadorians and their lawyers in 2005, when similar incidents took place. See here.

Chevron has long relied on corporate spies to try and undermine the Ecuadorians' lawsuit.

Remember Diego Borja and Wayne Hansen?

A Chevron contractor, Diego Borja, admitted to a childhood friend he was Chevron's "dirty tricks" operative in Ecuador. The company said it paid him to lift soil and water samples from oil sites during the trial. In a recorded conversation, though, Borja said, his real job was to undermine the trial, something he said Chevron's lawyers had never been able to do in court.

On audio tapes, Borja said that he tried to spy on the Ecuadorians' testing lab by pretending to be someone else; that he switched dirty samples for clean samples; and that could prove Chevron had "cooked" evidence in the case. See here.

Borja partnered with an American named Wayne Hansen, to secretly videotape one of the judges who heard the case. Hansen and Borja used a spy pen and spy watch to tape the judge. They tried to offer him a bribe on camera. When the judge prepared to leave the room, Hansen badgered him to admit Chevron was guilty. The judge never discussed much less accepted a bribe and repeatedly told the two that he could not comment on Chevron's guilt. See here and here.

Nonetheless, Chevron has paraded the tapes in front of the news media and U.S. courts to argue fraud.

The online legal publication, Courthouse News, obtained emails written by Hansen to two of Chevron's private investigative firms hired to "handle" the California man after the Ecuadorians revealed Hansen was a convicted drug felon, not a legitimate businessman looking for contracts in Ecuador, as Chevron claimed.

Hansen wrote to Chevron's private investigator Oliver Beard of Investigative Research Services, Inc., that he wanted a "deal" similar to what Borja had received for the secret videotapes of the judge. Hansen wrote: "I need to hear from a real player with a plan for Wayne Hansen."

Not long after, Chevron hired another private investigative firm, The Mason Investigative Group, to deal with Hansen who vanished from the U.S. after being subpoenaed in 2011 under federal court order. According to the Courthouse News emails, Hansen thanked Eric Mason, the firm's president, for helping him move to Peru where he was "living like a king."

Eric Mason, Chevron's Spy

Currently Chevron, Borja and The Mason Group are fighting the release of discovery documents to the Ecuadorians and the Government of Ecuador in a California federal court. Out of 700 documents, only 13 largely irrelevant documents have been turned over by Chevron, Borja and The Mason Group. The Ecuadorians and the Government of Ecuador have been trying for over a year to obtain the documents in the face of repeated obstruction by Chevron and lawyers for The Mason Group and Borja, all of whom are paid by Chevron.

Legal papers filed in the discovery action accuse all three of trying to hide Chevron's "involvement in concocting and executing a plan to undermine the environmental litigation in Ecuador by tainting the presiding judge with a manufactured scandal."

Remember Mary Cuddehe and Sam Anson?

Sam Anson, Chevron's Spy

In 2010, the Atlantic Monthly exposed yet another clandestine effort by Chevron to throw the case.

Mary Cuddehe, an Iowa-born graduate of Columbia University with a Masters degree in Journalism, published an article documenting that the investigative firm Kroll has been running an espionage operation in Ecuador on behalf of Chevron.

Sam Anson, an investigator for Kroll, offered Cuddehe $20,000 for six weeks of work to appear as an independent journalist while working as an undercover spy in Ecuador. Her job was to spy on sick Ecuadorians to determine if they really had an illness. Anson paid for Cuddehe to travel to Bogota where the case was explained and she was offered the money in the suite of a luxury hotel. She later declined the job and instead wrote an article for the Atlantic Monthly.

Chevron refused to comment on Cuddehe, but the company remains associated with Anson who spies for the oil giant full time.

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Chevron’s Human Rights Hitmen

Chevron has created the world’s worst environmental disaster. The irreparable damage to the Amazon is heartbreaking. Even worse, Chevron’s irresponsibility has caused poisoning and death of indigenous and rural Ecuadorians. Chevron dumped over 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, but instead of taking responsibility and doing the right thing the oil giant is pouring money into getting itself off the hook.

The Rainforest Action Network makes an accurate assessment with their new Chevron’s Human Rights Hitmen.The site states:

But rather than take responsibility for cleaning up its oily mess in Ecuador, Chevron has enlisted a team of legal vultures, PR hacks, and other people more greedy than principled to distract attention from the overwhelming evidence of its guilt and deny justice to the victims of Chevron’s contamination. Help us expose Chevron’s Human Rights Hitmen by using the buttons to the right to share with your friends, family, and other networks.

It’s shocking to see the phrase hitmen, but that’s essentially what these people are. This is a major human rights issue and every step of the way these people do more to pile on to the pain and suffering that the Ecuadorians are experiencing.

Mitch Anderson at City Brights hits the nail on the head when discussing Chevron’s actions:

What first struck me, which shouldn't have been a surprise, is how Chevron's spokesperson Kent Robertson is able to consistently, and in a very disciplined way, manipulate the truth. Not an admirable job, but given that Chevron has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years on high powered law firms and public relations outfits, it's no wonder that the company has developed a sophisticated (but disingenuous) narrative in order to distract the media, financial analysts and shareholders from the central issue: Chevron has been proven guilty of massive environmental crimes in the Amazon, thousands of indigenous peoples and farmers continue to suffer a widespread public health crisis, and Chevron is facing a very real multi-billion liability, with serious financial, operational and reputational consequences to the company.

Just who are these ‘hitmen?’ They include lawyers, dirty tricksters and spies. Diego Borja helped skew evidence. He is even quoted as saying: “Crime does pay.” Sam Anson tried to convince a journalist to spy on plaintiffs in the law suit. Andrea Neuman has a history of defending reckless corporations. R. Hewitt Pate, Chevron’s Vice President and General Counsel, even admits that the company has no intention of ever paying the victims of this disaster.

When you think about the millions upon millions of dollars Chevron is spending on these dirty tricks and hired guns it’s hard not to feel a sense of outrage. Especially considering that all of that money is going to getting out of paying for their disaster.

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Chevron’s Secret Agent In Ecuador: Meet Sam Anson of Kroll

Last week The Atlantic Magazine, in an article by American journalist Mary Cuddehe, exposed the latest element of Chevron's world-wide campaign to escape liability for illegally dumping toxins in Ecuador: a bona fide corporate espionage scandal.

According to a firsthand account by Cuddehe, Chevron used Kroll (the world's leading publicly traded investigations firm) to help the company concoct a creepy plan to create a journalist spy ring in Ecuador's Amazon to try to undermine a potential multi-billion dollar judgment against the company for 26 years of toxic dumping.

This is consistent with Chevron's desperate behavior in Ecuador. And Kroll had the perfect man for Chevron's black-bag job: Sam Anson, the company's "Managing Director for Latin America & the Caribbean." The fact that this conduct was likely to violate the ethical rules of the legal and investigative professions was apparently of no instance to the company or to Anson.

How do we know the "Sam" in The Atlantic story is Sam Anson? Read on.

The Cuddehe article described "Sam" as a former free lance writer reporting on race and hip hop… a former American journalist… someone in his mid-40s… who carries himself with "the ease that comes with professional achievement". He was also described as a Kroll operative working for Chevron.

Well, that seems to fit Sam Anson neatly. A former reporter before going over to the dark side (check out a Vibe magazine article written by "Sam Anson" on race and hip hop here, and Anson's LinkedIn profile lists him as a former "investigative reporter" for various publications), Anson has a long history with Kroll. He has been with the company for a decade, moving from Managing Director of the company's Los Angeles unit to his current position – at least according to his LinkedIn profile. But we can't give you a link for that – Anson deleted it sometime last week after the article appeared. (You can still catch a glimpse on Google's Cache, if you hurry…) And a simple Google search of his name gives us a bunch of pictures of Mr. Anson (which we've conveniently pasted into this blog), and a bunch of articles (here and here) citing Anson as Kroll's Managing Director for Latin America & the Caribbean.

As a former reporter, Anson knew that if he could find a reporter willing to lie, he would have the perfect spy. So he tried to recruit Cuddehe, a youngish reporter in her 20s based in Mexico City.

Cuddehe, an Iowa-born graduate of Columbia University with a Masters degree in Journalism, has published articles in The New Republic, the Miami Herald, and The Associated Press. She spoke Spanish and was a legitimate journalist – the perfect "pawn" (in her words) for Anson and Chevron.

Anson flew Cuddahe to Bogota and put her up at Chevron's expense in a luxury hotel. Anson then told Cuddehe that he wanted her to go to Lago Agrio, Ecuador (the site of the trial) and pretend to be writing a story about the case, while secretly funneling information back to Chevron.

Cuddehe wrote about Anson's attempt to hire her in The Atlantic:

"At first I thought I was underqualified for the job. But as it turned out I was exactly what they were looking for: a pawn."

"…there was a reason [Chevron] wanted me… If I went to Lago Agrio myself and pretended to write a story, no one would suspect that the starry-eyed young American poking around was actually shilling for Chevron."

Chevron's decision to pay journalists to lie as part of a spy campaign is "disturbing evidence of questionable if not outright illicit conduct by Chevron and Kroll" according to Jonathan Abady, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. Abady noted in a press release that Chevron had the option to use legitimate, above-board investigators, but instead choose to use a clandestine and unethical investigative strategy.

"Legitimate investigations are fine; paying journalists to lie is unethical and a direct attack on the credibility of all journalists worldwide," he said in a press release available here.

Abady also noted that Kroll investigators who misrepresent themselves at the behest of legal counsel could be violating the ethical rules of the legal profession, subjecting Chevron's lawyers to sanctions in the United States. Hew Pate, Chevron's General Counsel, needs to explain the situation.

Chevron's actions shouldn't come as a surprise. The company has been embroiled in a steady procession of scandals as it has engaged in unethical and potentially illegal activity in its efforts to escape liability in Ecuador. Just last year, the Amazonian communities accused Chevron of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by engaging in a "sting" operation where a bribe was offered to help remove the trial judge from the case. An investigation determined that the "sting" operation and bribe offer was made by a long-time Chevron contractor, Diego Borja, who worked under the direction of Chevron's lead Ecuador lawyer Adolfo Callejas and the Chevron vice-president supervising the trial, Ricardo Reis Veiga (now under indictment in Ecuador for criminal fraud).

Borja has a long history with Chevron in Ecuador – earlier this year, Santiago Escobar, a childhood friend of Borja's - publicized taped conversations he had with Borja where Borja brags about the criminal acts he had conducted on Chevron's behalf. Among the items that Borja bragged about? Falsifying evidence at trial and facilitating a Chevron bribe of Ecuadorian army officials in 2005 to fabricate a charge that local indigenous leaders were planning a terrorist attack against Chevron's lawyers, forcing the cancellation of a critical judicial inspection of a contaminated Chevron well site.

Borja is now residing in San Ramon, California – just a few blocks from Chevron's headquarters – where the company stashed him away to keep him out of reach of the subpoena power of the Ecuadorian courts he conspired to undermine. He lives in a luxury villa that backs up to a golf course.

Chevron's actions are irresponsible, unethical, and potentially criminal. But this is a company that dumped (by its own admission) more than 18 billion gallons of toxic "produced water" directly into the waterways and environment on which tens of thousands of people rely – so it isn't expected to care about little things like ethics and corporate responsibility.

Chevron should stop spending millions of dollars on spies, and recognize the fact that it has a moral, ethical, and legal duty to clean up the catastrophe it left in Ecuador.

Sam Anson: who among Chevron's law firms is running you? Gibson Dunn, Jones Day, or King & Spalding? And exactly why did you delete your LinkedIn profile after Cuddehe published her article? And which journalists are you paying to go undercover in Ecuador?

Come clean, Sam Anson.

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