Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Lago Agrio oil field" in English language version.
Equador's indigenous Cofan tribe is suing the US company for oil clean-up costs.
For now, it is still the world's largest pollution judgment: the $19 billion Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron for pollution of the Amazon rainforest. But the pollution judgment is unraveling—the victim, it seems, of contamination—contamination by fraud and corruption. The latest shocking revelations may be the judgment's death knell.
Actor and social activist Danny Glover has arrived in Ecuador where he plans to visit an Amazonian rainforest at the heart of the Chevron contamination trial.(registration required)
In November 2017, Brazil's Superior Court of Justice unanimously rejected an attempt to enforce the Ecuadorian judgment. Brazil's Deputy Prosecutor General concluded that the judgment was "issued in an irregular manner, especially under deplorable acts of corruption."
For eight years, Texaco fought to have the lawsuit dismissed, on the ground that it should be tried not in the U.S. but in Ecuador. Donziger and his colleagues feared such a turn: Ecuador's judicial system was notoriously corrupt, and its government relied on oil revenues for a third of its annual budget.
Subtitle: A crusading lawyer helped Ecuadorans secure a huge environmental judgment against Chevron. But did he go too far?
The tribunal unanimously held that a $9.5 billion pollution judgment by Ecuador's Supreme Court against Chevron "was procured through fraud, bribery and corruption and was based on claims that had been already settled and released by the Republic of Ecuador years earlier."
Monday's decision affirms a lower-court ruling by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who found in 2014 that the $9.5 billion environmental-damage judgment won by New York lawyer Steven Donziger and his Ecuadorean plaintiffs against Chevron was obtained through fraud and corruption. Judge Kaplan ruled Mr. Donziger couldn't enforce the judgment in the U.S. or profit from the award anywhere in the world.
The tribunal found Ecuador released Texaco in 1998 of its cleanup duties after the company spent $40 million on environmental remediation.
Subitle: Ruling Gives Oil Giant Boost in Fight Against $9.5 Billion Ecuadorean Judgment.(subscription required)
Subtitle: U.S. Scientist Says He Didn't Write Reports Attributed to Him on Pollution in the Rain Forest.
