Chevron paying at least $326,000 bribe to Ecuadorian judge for false testimony
Jan 28, 2013 | Corporate Social Responsibility Newswire
In press statements, Chevron has admitted it will pay at least $326,000
to a former disgraced Ecuador judge for false testimony designed to help
the oil giant evade a $19 billion judgment against the company for the
world's worst oil contamination.
Last week the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, who won the judgment, revealed in a press release
that Chevron had offered lucrative benefits packages to former
Ecuadorian judges in return for false testimony in order to undermine
the environmental trial that led to the $19 billion verdict.
Chevron's $326,000 payment to a former disgraced Ecuador judge, Alberto
Guerra Bastides, includes a $38,000 one-time payment for Guerra's
erroneous affidavit, immigration from Ecuador to Miami, Florida, a
generous $12,000 a month salary, plus an undetermined amount in health
insurance and legal costs -- a package of kickbacks and bribes similar
to the ones offered to Chevron contractor Diego Borja, who secretly
videotaped another Ecuador judge and falsely accused him of taking a
bribe. Borja, who Chevron has paid at least $2.2 million since 2009,
later recanted his story in a conversation with a friend after Chevron
re-located him from Ecuador to California then Texas. See here and here.
The new effort - which representatives of the plaintiffs said was
tantamount to bribery - comes at a time when Chevron seems
increasingly prone to use desperate measures to shore up its ailing
legal position after an Ecuador court found it guilty of deliberately
dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste when it operated in Ecuador
from 1964 to 1992. Chevron now faces seizure actions targeting an
estimated $15 billion of assets in Canada and Brazil, while an Argentine
court recently froze millions of dollars of company assets in that
country.
Karen Hinton, the U.S. spokesperson for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, said:
"Alberto Guerra is a disgraced former Ecuadorian judge who is being paid
hundreds of thousands of dollars by Chevron to make false allegations
about the Ecuador trial court judgment. In exchange for living the good
life in Miami at Chevron's expense, Guerra is now trying to carve out a
role in the company's ongoing Nixon-style dirty tricks campaign to evade
paying its $19 billion legal obligation for creating the world's worst
environmental catastrophe. This obligation is owed by Chevron to the
indigenous and farmer communities in Ecuador whose cultures have been
decimated by the company's greedy and reckless practice of discharging
billions of gallons of toxic waste into the environment.
"By its repeated actions of subterfuge, Chevron has shown that it is
more than willing to violate the law to escape being held accountable
for its environmental crimes and fraudulent cover-up in Ecuador. We note
that Chevron's campaign in Ecuador to bribe judges and illegally
pressure the government to quash the legal case already has cost the
company a multi-billion dollar punitive damages penalty and could result
in the loss of billions of dollars worth of strategic company assets in
seizure actions around the globe."
Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the 80 indigenous and farmer
communities in Ecuador who won the judgment against Chevron, said that
Guerra had offered to provide truthful testimony to the rainforest
communities if they would pay him. The communities refused on principle
to accede to that request, and instead encouraged Guerra to disclose
what he knew about Chevron's corruption and pressure campaign against
him and other judges, said Fajardo. Rebuffed by the rainforest
communities, Guerra then accepted Chevron's offer and moved to the U.S.,
he added.
"It always was obvious that Guerra wished to sell himself to the highest
bidder, a fact which undermined his credibility and made him a
profoundly unreliable witness," said Fajardo.
He also noted that Guerra had been removed from the bench in Ecuador
after being denounced for acts of corruption or irregular behavior in
more than 30 cases, including several involving drug traffickers who
were let go prior to trial in violation of legal rules.
Fajardo said evidence against Chevron - including audiotapes of
illicit contacts - is being provided to authorities in Ecuador and the
United States. In the U.S., the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)
prohibits improper payments to foreign officials in exchange for an
economic benefit. Chevron already has paid the Department of Justice $30
million for violating the FCPA in Iraq.
The new evidence discovered by the plaintiffs includes:
▪ After "flipping" Guerra, Chevron appears to be using him to pressure
other former judges in Ecuador who presided over the case to introduce
them to the idea of secret benefits in exchange for false or misleading
testimony. Part of the "pitch" is that if the judges do not go along
with the plan, they will be attacked by Chevron as "corrupt" or they
will miss out on the princely benefits package they could otherwise
receive.
▪ The Chevron operation is in part being executed by Andres Rivero, a
Miami-based lawyer who formerly represented a Chevron executive on
charges he tried to defraud Ecuador's government by implementing a sham
environmental remediation. In recent months, Rivero - who is fluent in
Spanish - has been in Ecuador various times to contact judges. Rivero
is a former U.S. prosecutor who ironically has lectured several legal
groups on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to his website.
▪ The operation also marks the return in the case of the U.S.-based
private investigations agency Kroll and notorious undercover operative
Sam Anson, who now runs a private intelligence outfit in Miami called
Custom Information Services that counts Chevron as its main client. When
Anson worked directly for Kroll in 2010, he was caught offering $20,000
to an independent journalist to spy on the plaintiffs
in Ecuador. Anson is considered to be the mastermind of Chevron's
undercover operations in Ecuador, according to the investigation.
Humberto Piaguaje, a leader of the Secoya indigenous group and the
recently-named coordinator of the legal case for the affected
communities, said the "buying" of witnesses by Chevron was nothing new.
"If one reviews the history of the case, whenever Chevron's legal
position deteriorates the company resorts to more corrupt acts," he
said.
Chevron has a long history in Ecuador of trying to undermine the
environmental trial through improper pressure and illegal means,
according to Ecuador's courts. The final verdict included an $8.6
billion punitive damages penalty for trying to undermine the
administration of justice in the country.
In 2009, with the scientific evidence at trial overwhelmingly pointing
to Chevron's guilt and with a verdict imminent, the company launched a
video entrapment scheme where company operative Borja was caught
offering the sitting trial judge a bribe in exchange for a remediation
contract. The action backfired when it was disclosed that Chevron paid Borja at least $2.2 million
for his efforts, which involved moving him to the U.S., housing him in a
luxury home just miles from corporate headquarters near San Francisco,
paying his income taxes, cell phone bill, first-class travel expenses,
and legal fees needed to fend off criminal and civil investigations.
In 2010, Chevron was caught trying to offer an illegal $1 billon bribe
to Ecuador's government in exchange for an agreement that the government
would violate its own Constitution and quash the legal case. Chevron operatives also were caught creating fake military intelligence reports to undermine the trial process in Ecuador.
More recently, a Chevron technical expert disclosed documents that the
company designed its soil sampling plan during the trial to evade
contaminated areas and to hide dirty soil samples from the court. Another Chevron technical expert,
Fernando Reyes, offered an "affidavit" that contained numerous
inaccuracies meant to favor Chevron's narrative. Earlier, Chevron had
produced an internal memo directing all employees in Ecuador to destroy
records of oil spills.
Much of Chevron's history of trying to corrupt the trial in Ecuador
through intimidation, bribes, and espionage is summarized in these court
documents filed by New York lawyer Steven Donziger and Ecuadorian lawyer Juan Pablo Saenz.
Rivero represented Rodrigo Perez Pallares, Chevron's longtime lawyer in
Ecuador and one of the masterminds of a fraudulent remediation in the
mid-1990s that the company still tries to use as a defense at trial.
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