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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The Canadian face of the biggest lawsuit in the world

The Chevron Pit spoke with Jeff Gray of Toronto's Globe & Mail yesterday about the Ecuadorians' new lawyer, Alan Lenczner. Gray wanted to know why Lenczner decided to take our case.

We told him: "Because he knows he will win, and Chevron will lose."

After an indepth review of the Ecuador and U.S. court record on the case and a trip to Ecuador to view the contamination, Lenczner joined the legal team.

“It (seeing the contamination) influenced my decision a lot. I just saw the devastation … and I’ve seen the plight of these people,” he said. “… Forget the noise about lawsuits and distraction and internal memos and everything else, the fact remains that this is a mess.”

Read the story here: The Canadian face of the biggest lawsuit in the world

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Ecuadorians File Suit In Canada Against Chevron To Collect Money Awarded By Court In Historic Lawsuit

Ecuadorian plaintiffs started the process of enforcing the $18 billion court judgement by filing a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario to take over various assets that Chevron and its subsidiaries hold in Canada. Press release with more details below.

Ecuadorians Hit Chevron With $18 Billion Enforcement Action In Canada 

Toronto, Ontario – Villagers from Ecuador's rainforest today filed a lawsuit in Canada as the first step in forcing the company to comply with an $18 billion court judgment rendered in Ecuador and imposed to permit the clean-up of what experts believe is the largest oil disaster on the planet.

The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario, (see here) targets Chevron and various subsidiaries that together hold significant assets in the country – including Canada's largest offshore drilling project and new investments in oil sands in the province of Alberta, said Alan Lenczner, the noted Canadian litigator representing the Amazon communities. Canada also has a law that allows interest to run on a foreign judgment during the enforcement process, potentially adding a significant amount to the judgment against the oil giant.

The Ecuadorians, who consist of the inhabitants of five indigenous groups and approximately 70 farmer communities, are being forced to file enforcement actions because Chevron refuses to pay the judgment imposed by an Ecuador trial court in February 2011, which was later affirmed by Ecuador's court of appeals in January. The oil giant has virtually no assets in Ecuador.

Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the Ecuadorians and the recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize and a CNN "Hero" Award, said his clients were intent on collecting the entire judgment.

"The time for delay is over," he said. "For decades Chevron refused to address the contamination that has devastated our ancestral lands. While Chevron might think it can ignore court orders in Ecuador, it will be impossible to ignore a court order in Canada where a court may seize the company's assets if necessary to secure payment.

"We plan to exercise our legal right to collect every penny of the legitimate judgment from Ecuador, even if we have to drag Chevron kicking and screaming into courts around the world," said Fajardo, who grew up in poverty working in Ecuador's oil fields and who put himself through law school specifically to hold Chevron accountable for the environmental disaster. See this article in Vanity Fair about Fajardo.

The judgment in Ecuador resulted from an eight-year trial that produced more than 64,000 soil and water samples that pointed to extensive contamination at more than 350 Chevron well sites and oil production stations in a large swath of Ecuador's northern Amazon region, known as the Oriente. This area was considered one of the most bio-diverse areas on earth before Chevron – to lower production costs – deliberately discharged billions of gallons of toxic waste into the environment, decimating local tribesmen and plummeting the region into a tailspin of despair from which it has yet to recover, according to evidence before the court.

(A video that explains Chevron's substandard operational practices in Ecuador and efforts to corrupt the trial process can be seen here.)

The result of the dumping, according to evidence presented at trial, is a public health crisis and the poisoning of a large swath of pristine rainforest that indigenous communities had relied on for millennia for their sustenance. Five indigenous groups – the Cofan, Secoya, Siona, Quichua, and Huaroni – are struggling to survive. Part of the judgment will be used to restore the forest so that the indigenous communities can return to their hunting and gathering traditions, said Fajardo.

Lenczner, the Canadian litigator who is representing the Ecuadorians, is considered by Chambers Global to be one of the top lawyers in Canada, having appeared in courts in all ten provinces and argued numerous cases before the country's Supreme Court. He is the founding partner of Lenczner & Slaght, a boutique litigation firm with approximately 50 lawyers that recently was named one of the top ten litigation firms in the country by Canadian Lawyer magazine.

"I am honored to have been asked by the indigenous people of Ecuador to correct a historic injustice visited upon them by Chevron," said Lenczner, who visited Ecuador and reviewed the extensive trial and appellate records of the case, which exceed 250,000 pages.

"Chevron fought for nine years to move the trial from the United States to Ecuador, and then had a full opportunity for eight years to defend itself in Ecuador," Lenczner added. “This is a legitimate judgment and I believe Canadian courts will recognize it and enforce it as such."

Fajardo said that the Ecuadorians have a list of countries that are possible targets for enforcement actions and that additional actions are likely to be filed to ensure the full amount of the judgment can be satisfied. A significant portion of Chevron's assets are located around the world in over 70 wholly-owned subsidiaries and 75% of the company's annual profits are derived outside of the U.S., according to an analysis by the plaintiffs.

Almost all countries have specific laws governing the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. Most of the laws favor enforcement, subject to specific exceptions such as lack of jurisdiction or fraud. Chevron has stated it will try to block enforcement by alleging fraud, but the Ecuadorian trial and appellate courts directly addressed the allegations and rejected them. See the lower court judgment and the appellate court judgment.

Representatives of the affected population, who meet every two months in the rainforest in a body called the Assembly of the Affected Ones (Asamblea de Afectados), were thrilled that the first enforcement action was filed. The local population has suffered from high rates of cancer, spontaneous miscarriages, and oil-related diseases. See here, here, and here.

"This is a historic day for us," said Luis Yanza, the coordinator of the Assembly. "We might be impoverished materially but we are rich in spirit. The time has now come to use the force of law to make Chevron clean up its pollution. No company, even one as rich and powerful as Chevron, is above the law."

In Canada, Chevron's biggest assets are a 20% interest in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, which yields a capacity of 255,000 barrels per day and supplies 10% of Canada's oil needs; the Hibernia project, which is Canada's largest offshore drilling project; and the Ells River concession, which covers 75,000 acres and contains up to an estimated 7.5 billion barrels of oil.

Chevron also is the largest gasoline convenience store marketer in British Columbia through a network of 162 service stations, 134 Town Pantry convenience stores, and 21 White Spot Triple O quick-serve restaurants. Chevron also owns the Burnaby refinery, which processes over 50,000 barrels of oil per day.

Total daily production for Chevron in Canada in 2011 averaged 29,000 barrels of crude oil, 4 million cubic feet of natural gas, and 40,000 barrels of synthetic oil from oil sands, according to public disclosures of the company. Canada is one of the top ten markets in the world for Chevron's capital spending in 2012, according to the company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing of the enforcement action comes on the heels of a major challenge by Chevron shareholders over the Ecuador matter.

Today Chevron CEO John Watson suffered a stunning reprimand during a tense annual meeting when investors holding over 38% of the company's shares (representing $73 billion worth of stock) voted for a resolution that directly challenged his authority because of the Ecuador case. Last week, 40 institutional shareholders representing $570 billion under management – including the New York state pension fund – urged the company to settle the Ecuador litigation.

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Chevron's Grand Shareholder Deception

Hew Pate, Chevron's $7.8 Million Lawyer, “Celebrates" Another Legal Defeat At the Hands of Ecuador's Rainforest Communities

The rulings this week by U.S. federal judge Lewis A. Kaplan denying Chevron's motion for attachment in the Ecuador case was by any reasonable measure a setback for the oil giant in its campaign to evade paying the $18 billion court judgment.  In fact, it is the latest of string of stunning losses for Chevron in courts in the U.S. and Ecuador over the last several months -- losses that can be laid at the doorstep of R. Hewitt Pate, Chevron's General Counsel and the mastermind behind the company's increasingly confused legal strategy in the Ecuador matter. See here.

These losses include a unanimous reversal in January by a U.S. federal appeals court of an injunction purportedly barring enforcement of the Ecuador judgment and an affirmance earlier this year by the Ecuador appellate court of the overwhelming evidence that the company committed crimes and fraud in Ecuador. See here and here.

Chevron's contamination in Ecuador also has been confirmed by numerous independent journalists and is simply indisputable -- see this 60 Minutes segment and this video prepared by the plaintiffs.  In addition, Chevron's lead outside law firm in the case -- Gibson Dunn & Crutcher -- has been sanctioned repeatedly for committing ethical violations even as it bills the company hundreds of millions of dollars as part of a "rescue operation". See here.

One would never know from Pate that the legal prospects of Chevron are dimming or that the company is being taken for a ride by Gibson Dunn.  In a press release that can only be described as the ultimate in chutzpah, Pate celebrated Chevron's latest legal defeat yesterday by claiming "victory" because the judge tossed out only a few of the fraud claims the company filed against lawyers for the plaintiffs as opposed to all of the claims.  In keeping with his spin, Pate failed to mention in his press release that Kaplan expressly found that Chevron is unlikely to prevail on the remaining fraud claims.

We have said it before:  Pate and the higher-ups in Chevron management are leading Chevron and its shareholders down a dangerous path over the Ecuador liability, and possibly over a cliff.  The spin is getting increasingly desperate as the walls begin to close in on the company's plan to evade paying the judgment.

Whether spinning bad news into fake news is a deliberate strategy or a function of internal self-delusion can be sorted out by others -- including SEC regulators who have been called on to determine whether the company is producing materially false and misleading information about the Ecuador liability. See here.

These are our takeaways on the Kaplan decisions this week:

1) Pate's latest press release shows the company continues to mislead shareholders over the Ecuador liability, as documented in stunning detail by Canadian securities lawyer Graham Erion in this report released in April. Pate's press release was designed to sugarcoat an adverse legal decision, exactly the kind of gamesmanship that regulators frown upon.  Expect a new report soon from the plaintiffs on how Pate's press releases on the Ecuador case are designed to hide risks from shareholders and the markets.

2) Judge Kaplan, who used to consistently favor Chevron in his decisions, has started to lose his appetite for the case after getting sternly rebuked in January by the U.S. court of appeals in New York.  Not only did Kaplan deny a Chevron motion to attach the assets of the Ecuadorians for the second time, he also dismissed two fraud claims and cast serious doubt on Chevron's remaining RICO claims against American lawyer Steven Donziger. (The Ecuadorians maintains that Chevron's claims are baseless and are a ruse to distract attention from its own criminal misconduct in Ecuador.)

3) It is increasingly clear that Chevron's RICO case is a dog reluctant to hunt.  Worse for Chevron, if the case hunts -- as in, actually survives various motions to dismiss and gets to a jury -- it can bite Chevron far more harshly than it can bite Donziger or his Ecuadorian clients.   Chevron will be on the defensive because of counterclaims about its attempts to corrupt the Ecuadorian judicial system.  A jury will be able to hear evidence about Chevron's sham remediation, its efforts to bribe Ecuador's government, its attempts to doctor evidence through its "dirty tricks" operative Diego Borja, and its threats to judges.  All of this has been detailed in a sworn affidavit from Juan Pablo Saenz, an Ecuadorian lawyer.

4) Pate is going to have a whale of a time explaining the Ecuador problem at the company's upcoming annual meeting on May 30.  How he explains why several prominent law firms around the world have rallied to the cause of the Ecuadorians when the case is supposedly an "extortionate scheme" will be interesting to watch. Further, a large group of Chevron shareholders is pressuring the SEC to investigate Chevron based on the Erion report, which exposes out of control risk-taking and an apparent cover-up.  Expect several pension funds to speak out with a more forceful voice.

Multiple lawsuits against Chevron assets in various jurisdictions are now looming over the company.  Once these actions are filed and start progressing through the courts, Chevron will have a hard time entering into partnerships or making further investments in countries that could be strategically important to the company's growth.

In the meantime, Chevron's feckless Board of Directors awarded Pate a 75% pay increase (to $7.8 million) for losing the Ecuador case. See here. Because of Pate's bungling of the Ecuador matter, billions of dollars of Chevron assets are now at risk of being attached, seized, and auctioned off at fire sale prices because the company refuses to comply with its legal obligations.  In the double-dealing inside world of Chevron-land, this merits an extraordinary pay raise.

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Chevron Groupie Posing As Journalist Removes His Blog From Web

Looks like Chevron groupie Alex Thorne has ended his short-lived career as a “journalist.” After the Amazon Defense Coalition issued a press release exposing Thorne masquerading as a journalist in an effort to undermine funding for an environmental advocacy group, Thorne deleted his blog and appears to be taking a hiatus from posting articles.

Karen Hinton, who represents the Ecuadorians suing Chevron for oil contamination, suggests that Thorne focus on his children, a worthy profession. Thorne admitted to Hinton last week that he was a “bored stay-at-home Dad,” not a journalist.

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Miami Herald Journalist Proves Chevron Lied About The Remediation

"(Chevron) always show(s) you the shirt the coat and the tie. They never show you the tumor underneath the shirt."

Miami Herald reporter Jim Wyss has caught Chevron in yet another lie about its so-called “remediation” agreement. Wyss toured one of the oil well sites, Sascha 53, that Chevron told both U.S. and Ecuadorian courts had been cleaned.

He described what he saw after a man with him dug just a few inches below the ground in today’s Miami Herald article:

“Within a few inches the dirt gives off the pungent odor of petroleum. Within a few feet the dirt glistens with oil residue. When a few handfuls of the soil are dropped into a bucket of water, a thick oil-slick coats the surface.”

Chevron claims it is not guilty of the contamination in Ecuador because the remediation agreement between Chevron and the Ecuadorian government releases it from any responsibility. However, scientific tests have proven that Chevron has never cleaned up the oil sites mentioned in the agreement.

Today the Amazon Defense Coalition released this press release that argues the reporter’s eye-witness account of the contamination is further evidence that Chevron has lied to U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan who has, by and large, accepted Chevron’s statement that it remediated a small percentage of the oil sites.

The only response Chevron’s spokesperson could come up with was accusing Ecuadorians of “spiking” the ground with oil themselves.

Wyss quoted Donald Moncayo, a representative of the Ecuadorians, saying:

"They (Chevron) always show you the shirt the coat and the tie," he said of the area, called Sacha 53, which is now pastureland and spindly trees. "They never show you the tumor underneath the shirt."

"This is their remediation effort," Moncayo says. "They're no better than animals."

Exactly.

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How Big A Lie Will $8 Million Buy?

Han Shan of Amazon Watch answers the question of how big a lie $8 million will buy. He writes an interesting blog about a Chevron consultant who says the oil giant has never harmed the environment or human health in its oil exploration. Chevron has paid him at least $8 million, of which $5 million was for reports that said none of Chevron's contamination in the Ecuadorian rainforest is harmful to humans and environment.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2010

John Connor: Chevron's Well-Paid Liar in Ecuador

Along with our campaign allies at RAN & the tricksters at The Yes Men, we've been having some fun exposing Chevron's widely-panned new 'We Agree' ad campaign for the insulting greenwash it is.

But now, I want to turn back to some serious matters in the ongoing legal battle to hold Chevron accountable for massive devastation in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest region.

The Amazon Defense Coalition (ADC) issued a press release a few weeks back that highlighted a legal judgment against Chevron in Mississippi this past Spring. A jury verdict says that Chevron must pay $19 million dollars to five plaintiffs who were exposed to leaded gasoline fumes from leaking underground gas tanks owned by the company. According to the Associated Press, the daughter of the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit was born "severely mentally disabled, and the children of the other women suffer from respiratory conditions and learning disabilities."

What does this have to do with Ecuador and the mothers and children there who say Chevron is poisoning them?

Well, it was Chevron’s lead American expert in the Ecuador case John Connor who also testified in this recent Mississippi case. The U.S. jury rejected Connor's testimony, and a reading of the court transcriptunveils some very damning information.

An excerpt from the ADC press release:

In the trial -- which took place in Jefferson County, Mississippi -- Connor conceded on cross-examination that over almost two decades of work for Chevron he has never once concluded that the impact of his client’s operations has harmed even a single person, according to the court documents. Connor testified that he knew of no circumstance where “there were any injuries of individuals that were the responsibility of Chevron or Texaco.”

Connor also tried to exonerate Chevron by testifying that any contamination must have been caused by leaks from three storage tanks owned by a smaller company in the area, not the larger tanks owned by Chevron. But when confronted on cross-examination by evidence that he had misidentified the site from a state database, Connor admitted that he had never taken any steps to definitively verify that the gas tanks actually existed on the smaller company’s property.

John Connor: "Chevron paid me well to tell you this oil poses no danger to anyone."

Connor's testimony in Mississippi is very similar to his under-oath spin in the Ecuador case, intended to shore up Chevron's ludicrous argument that Ecuador's state oil company Petroecuador is responsible for all of the oil contamination in the region. This, despite Chevron admitting that it dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into Amazon waterways depended upon by thousands of local people for drinking and bathing. This, despite the fact that Chevron (in the form of its subsidiary Texaco, of course) dug every one of the 900+ toxic waste pits that the company abandoned, many of which continue to leech poisons into the soil and ground water [see this video to understand exactly how that happens].

Under cross-examination in Mississippi, Connor also admits that Chevron has paid him "at least" $8 million over the years and estimates that $5 million of that has been for his work in Ecuador.

Ordering Chevron to pay $19 million in damages, a jury in Mississippi rejected his ludicrous and laughable testimony and concluded that this guy has no credibility. And I encourage you, dear reader, to read the transcript. Even on paper in a format as weird as a court transcript, he sounds evasive and slippery at best, and like he's simply lying through his teeth at other times.

Now, people who are following the monumental class action in Ecuador will know that Chevron has been in a legal frenzy over the last few months, filing legal actions against more than 20 people on the plaintiffs' side demanding 'discovery' ranging from turning over footage and files to sitting for depositions conducted by Chevron lawyers.

The plaintiffs, busy dealing with this legal onslaught by a company with nearly bottomless resources, have yet to be able to truly fight fire with fire and seek discovery from Chevron in the same way.

In September, a U.S. judge granted a request by the government of Ecuador to subpoena Chevron's self-avowed 'dirty tricks guy' Diego Borja. Borja, of course, was captured by a friend-turned-whistleblower talking about how the company "cooked evidence" in the trial in Ecuador, and suggesting that his "bosses" at the company were directing him.

Now, it's time for the plaintiffs to drop some subpoenas on some of these Chevron "bosses" so we can learn the truth about the dirty tricks and lies that Chevron has been employing to evade accountability for its devastation in Ecuador.

But the more I learn about Chevron's highly-paid and deceitful "expert" John Connor, I think he may be the perfect place to start.

– Han

Han Shan is the Coordinator of Amazon Watch's Clean Up Ecuador Campaign

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Chevron's "Dirty Tricks" Hero Diego Borja Now Under the Gun

Chevron employee Diego Borja was known among his friends and acquaintances as “Chevron’s dirty tricks man” in Ecuador, according to a testimony of a childhood friend of Borja’s. One of those tricks was to try to entrap the judge hearing the $27 billion lawsuit against the company — a dirty trick he discussed with Chevron officials in San Ramon, the oil company’s corporate headquarters.

Borja’s friend, Santiago Escobar, said Borja told him that when he first spoke with Chevron about the videos, he made it clear he wanted to be paid for his efforts. Borja said he expected to be covered in terms of security and economically – “in everything” after handing over the videos. He told them, “Obviously, I’m not going to ask for anything now, because it would ruin everything.” Chevron told him not to worry, but it is “totally understood.”

This is just one of many dirty tricks played by Chevron to undermine the trial. Read more below in an informative post by Han Shan at the ChevroninEcuador blog.

Tables Turned: Lawsuit Targets Chevron "Dirty Tricks" Operative in Ecuador

Chevron and its liars – oops, I mean lawyers – are about to get a taste of their own medicine.

As the San Francisco Daily Journal reported yesterday, Chevron's 'dirty tricks guy' in Ecuador, Diego Borja, has been targeted with a subpoena and a demand to sit for a deposition and tell the truth about his operations to undermine the trial over Chevron's contamination of the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Chevron has been on a legal rampage, filing motion after motion against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' expert witnesses and consultants residing in the U.S. Most notably, the oil giant outraged 1st Amendment supporters when it subpoenaed hundreds of hours of raw footage from filmmaker Joe Berlinger whose film CRUDE examined Chevron's toxic legacy in Ecuador.

Now, as the Daily Journal writes, the tables have turned:

On Friday, Ecuador filed its own discovery request in San Francisco federal court under the same law Chevron has been using - 28 U.S.C. 1782, a statute designed to help parties obtain U.S.-based evidence for use in foreign proceedings. Ecuador is seeking to depose Diego Borja, one of two men who secretly videotaped a conversation with the original Ecuadorean judge in the case. In re Application of the Republic of Ecuador, 10-80225. Chevron claims the tapes showed the judge - who denied wrongdoing but recused himself - had already made up his mind to rule in the plaintiffs' favor as part of a bribery scheme. But Ecuador cites a report made by an investigator hired by the plaintiffs that suggests Borja is improperly linked to Chevron.

Last summer, Borja, a long-time Chevron employee in Ecuador who has been closely associated with the oil giant's legal defense in the environmental lawsuit, spearheaded the undercover sting operation against the judge overseeing the trial in Ecuador. Borja and a shady American former drug trafficker and convicted felon named Wayne Hansen posed as businessmen interested in contracts for environmental remediation should the plaintiffs prevail in the legal battle demanding Chevron clean up its oil contamination of the region.

As the Amazon Defense Coalition explains in a press release:

The court filings, made by the American law firm Winston & Strawn on behalf of Ecuadorian authorities fighting Chevron over an international arbitration claim, seek to depose Borja about his involvement in the sting operation, conducted with Borja's sidekick Wayne Hansen. In 2009, both Borja and Hansen used cameras hidden in a pen and a watch to secretly tape meetings with the trial judge presiding over the environmental case, and supposed government officials.

The men then turned over the tapes to Chevron, which posted them on YouTube. Chevron initially alleged the tapes showed an attempted bribery of the judge, but it was only the Chevron employee who discussed the bribe, and the judge was never in a meeting when a bribe was discussed.

But don't take their or my word for it. Reporting on revelations about the shady past of Borja's partner Wayne Hansen, the New York Times reported, simply:

"No bribes were shown in the tapes..."

In fact, Borja's plan to corrupt the trial and reap a windfall from Chevron has been unraveling since it was hatched.

In April, the Amazon Defense Coalition and Amazon Watch revealed a series of stunning admissions by Borja. A childhood friend of Borja's named Santiago Escobar, disgusted by Borja's bragging about his 'dirty tricks' for the company, recorded conversations and saved online chats in which Borja admits he "cooked" evidence in the trial and would reveal the damaging evidence unless he received enough money from Chevron for his 2009 sting operation.

Santiago Escobar has received death threats for blowing the whistle on Borja's operations but it didn't stop him from testifying before Ecuador's Prosecutor General's office about what he knew. And now, Borja will have to testify.

Among the quotes from the recordings cited in the legal filings is this gem:

"... I have correspondence [with Chevron officials] that talks about things you can't even imagine, dude... they're things that can make the Amazons win this just like this [snapping fingers]... I mean, what I have is conclusive evidence, photos of how they managed things internally."

And at one point, Borja laughs and says to his friend, "Crime does pay."

Before Chevron pushed its bullshit "corruption scandal" story out, the company paid to relocate Borja and his wife – who also apparently assisted in schemes to corrupt the trial – to the United States. For more than a year, Chevron has been paying $6,000 a month in rent for his large home with a swimming pool that abuts a golf course in a gated community only minutes away from Chevron's headquarters in San Ramon, CA. Chevron claimed to have moved Borja and his family to the U.S. for his "security" but it also helped him escape prosecution for any of the illegal activities he was involved in during the attempted sting operation against the judge, or in tampering with evidence in the trial.

Ironically, the fact that Borja is currently residing in the U.S. is what makes him subject to the legal action he now faces. The oil giant admitted a year ago that it had hired a high-powered and expensive criminal defense attorney for Borja, who was caught on tape talking about his "bosses" at Chevron directing his operations. Today, I'm sure those Chevron bosses are hoping the lawyers they've hired are worth their cost.

To the plaintiffs and many of the people who have watched with disgust at how Chevron has waged a dirty and deceitful campaign to evade responsibility for environmental devastation and human suffering in Ecuador, Diego Borja is but a bit player in the wide-ranging criminal enterprise that Chevron has built around this case. And none of it compares to the crimes the oil giant committed against the indigenous people whose way of life ended with the company's arrival in their land.

But hopefully, this latest legal action, and a thorough interrogation of Chevron's self-proclaimed 'dirty tricks' guy, Diego Borja, will help to further unravel the web of lies that Chevron has woven to conceal the truth about its poisonous legacy in Ecuador.

Background:

San Francisco Daily Journal, September 14, 2010:
With Discovery Bid, Ecuador Turns Tables On Chevron

Amazon Defense Coalition press release, September 14, 2010:
Lawsuit Targets Chevron "Dirty Tricks" Operative Over Ecuador Video Corruption Scandal

The whistleblower report on Diego Borja, including recordings of him spilling the beans to his childhood friend about his involvement in Chevron's systematic attempts to corrupt the trial:
Chevron's Dirty Tricks Operative in Ecuador, Diego Borja: Whistleblower Report

And for further background, read two Huffington Post articles I wrote:

First, I blew the lid off the whole supposed "corruption scandal" only days after Chevron announced it last fall:
Chevron's 'Dirty Tricks Operation' in the Amazon

Then I revealed the shockingly shady past of Diego Borja's convicted felon, drug-trafficker, partner-in-crime Wayne Hansen:
Chevron's Man in Ecuador: Felon, Drug-Trafficker, and Liar, Oh My!

– Han

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