Chevron Lawyer Faces Sanctions for Misleading Court Over “Dirty Tricks” Operation in Ecuador

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Businesswire

April 27, 2010 01:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron Lawyer Faces Sanctions for Misleading Court Over “Dirty Tricks” Operation in Ecuador
Adolfo Callejas Charged With Hiding Information to Delay Trial

QUITO, Ecuador--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chevron’s lead lawyer in Ecuador faces sanctions for misleading the court about a “dirty tricks” operation that the oil giant used to try to delay an environmental trial where it faces a multi-billion dollar liability, representatives of the plaintiffs announced today.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs filed a motion with the Ecuador court asserting that Chevron lawyer Adolfo Callejas misled the judge when he failed to disclose that secretly taped videos of the trial judge were made by a longtime Chevron contractor, Diego Borja, who worked for the company’s legal team in the trial. Callejas has worked as a lawyer with Chevron and its predecessor company in Ecuador, Texaco, for more than three decades.

The plaintiffs have called the creation of the videos – released on YouTube in August of last year -- a “dirty tricks” operation by Chevron intended to derail the trial, where the scientific evidence points to the oil giant’s culpability for causing a wide-ranging environmental catastrophe in Ecuador’s rainforest.

Chevron lawyer Callejas had told the Ecuador court that Borja was an independent third party who made the tapes and then turned them over to Chevron because of a sense of civic duty. Borja later admitted he and his wife were paid substantial sums of money by Chevron for years to work on the environmental trial, and later were moved by Chevron to the U.S. where Borja continues to receive a salary from the oil giant.


Read more: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100427006943&newsLang=en

[defendandprotect]

1. No difference between the oil industry and the Mafia . . .!!

[FreakinDJ]

2. It was TEXACO that dumped the oil

Chevron NEVER operated in Ecuador

When Chevron bought Texaco they inherited the "Clean Up"

[Judi Lynn]

3. So Texaco sells its filthy, hideously destructive business to Chevron, it's not Chevron's fault,

and screw Ecuador? It's all so simple, isn't it?

That's not the way things are done, or more corporations would destroy the countries they rape, and turn their killer businesses over to other corporations, and let them clean up the dead bodies, spit in the faces of the grieving families, and everyone who's WHITE and wealthy with great legal representation makes out just fine.

That's an elegant approach to things.

Unfortunately for the true morally depraved degenerates in the world, it's going to be getting HARDER to do that.

That's why we are seeing law suits like this.

[bobthedrummer]

4. There it is...

:hi:

[FreakinDJ]

5. WOW - you off your meds again

No one even suggested any thing like that - it would help if you got your facts straight BEFORE you climb up on your Soap Box

After the purchase of Texaco, Chevron recognized it's responsibility to wards cleaning up Texaco's mess and invested $Millions of dollars to wards the clean up. Ecuador (at least the current president whose political platform was to sue Chevron for $billions) feels Chevron should be an endless supply of money to his country.

Question for you "Smart Gurl" - what year did Ecuador Nationalize the Petroleum Industry in Ecuador?

[WhiteTara]

8. Your words is rude. n/t

[Vincardog]

6. Testify Judi Lynn I got yr back

[FreakinDJ]

7. It would help if she knew what she was talking about

The Chevron Corporation agreed yesterday to acquire Texaco Inc. for about $36 billion in stock, creating the world's fourth-largest oil concern. (Oct 16, 2000)
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/16/business/chevron-agrees-to-buy-texaco-for-stock-valued-at-36-billion.html?pagewanted=1

Between 1995 and 1998, Texaco completed a $40 million environmental remediation program reflective of Texaco's approximate 1/3 share of the oil-producing consortium with Petroecuador. In 1998, the Government of Ecuador declared and certified that the remediation met Ecuadorian and international standards and released Texaco from future obligations or liabilities.
http://www.texaco.com/sitelets/ecuador/en/remediation/Default.aspx

Protecting the Environment is certainly a noble cause - but outright "Blackmail Techniques", Disinformation Campaigns, and shear stupidity discredits EVERY Honest, True Environmentalist on the Planet

Keep up the Good Work Guys

Petroecuador, the operator and sole owner of the oil fields for 15 years, never fulfilled its responsibility to remediate its share of the venture's production sites and, since Texpet's exit from Ecuador, has compiled an atrocious and well-documented record of environmental neglect and misconduct.

[gratuitous]

9. Borja was an independent third party

To whom Chevron paid a lot of money and relocated to the U.S. But it was his civic duty that led to his making the tapes and giving them to Chevron, doncha know. Although we shouldn't draw any conclusions about Chevron's guilt or innocence because of this perfectly understandable chain of incredibly damning events that just . . . happened.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Chevron: Finding New Ways to Crush Opponents, Intimidate Filmmakers and Disempower Populations

Chevron: Finding New Ways to Crush Opponents, Intimidate Filmmakers and Disempower Populations

Joanne DoroshowExecutive Director, Center for Justice & Democracy
Posted: April 28, 2010 06:44 PM

I know I'm not the first one to draw comparisons between James Cameron's fictional Avatar, where a corporate-military entity uses force to obtain Pandora's valuable natural resource while devastating the indigenous population, and Joe Berlinger's award-winning documentary, Crude, where Texaco-Chevron actually does nearly the same thing in Ecuador's rainforest in order to extract oil. In Ecuador, the people are using the courts to try to force the company to account for the devastation it has caused. This is perhaps not possible on a moon like Pandora. Yet their struggles seem no easier than the Na'vi's.

Falling under the category "truth is stranger (and certainly more dangerous) than fiction," on Friday April 30, Crude's director, Joe Berlinger, will be in federal court in New York City fighting Chevron's attempt to force him to hand over to Chevron more than 600 hours of footage he did not use in the film. Berlinger obtained some of these outtakes confidentially or with the understanding that only with express permission would anyone see it. Chevron hopes it will find something to use against those who are suing it.

Joe Berlinger does superb work and it is painful to see him put through this kind of harassment. In addition to Crude, you may have seen his series Iconoclasts on the Sundance channel, or his excellent documentaries, like the 2004 film Metallica: Some Kind of Monster or Brother's Keeper. (On a personal note, Brother's Keeper was released in 1992, the same year as The Panama Deception, a documentary that I and three others produced. Brother's Keeper should have been nominated for an Academy Award that year. Like many great films, it wasn't. Our film was, and it won the Oscar. Brother's Keeper would have been our toughest competition, without doubt. Anyway ... )

Crude covered an incredibly important lawsuit. Originally brought against Chevron/Texaco (Texaco merged with Chevron in 2001) in the United States by about 30,000 indigenous and colonial rainforest dwellers, the case languished for nine year before being forced back to Ecuador. The victims are still seeking $27 billion to pay for both clean up and compensation for the sick and dying, who were made ill from severe pollution caused by nearly three decades of oil drilling. Chevron denies any wrongdoing.

When 60 Minutes covered the story last year, producers discovered that one of Chevron's tactics was to attack the attorney representing the victims and to call the clearly-legitimate case "frivolous." (This all seems very familiar to us.) 60 Minutes explained some of the legal shenanigans in which Chevron had already engaged:

In 1993, the Amazonians first filed suit in a U.S. federal court in New York. It was Steven Donziger's first big case. And it sat there for nine years while Texaco pressed this argument: that this legal matter belonged in Ecuador.

"Texaco wanted to be in Ecuador, you wanted to be in New York, and you lost," Pelley told Donziger. "You think Texaco expected you to go away?"

"I do," Donziger replied.

They didn't. And in 2003, on the first day of the trial in Lago Agrio, Chevron's lawyer, in his opening argument, said the Ecuadorian court didn't have jurisdiction to try the case.

"You wanted to go to Ecuador. Now you say you don't wanna be in Ecuador," Pelley told Chevron's Silvia Garrigo.

"Yeah. We didn't want to get sued, period," she replied.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-doroshow/chevron-finding-new-ways_b_556098.html