Coyote Blog

The Ecuadoran $18 billion court decision is turning out to be a monumental case of environmental fraud.  I am willing to believe that early critics of Texaco (now Chevron) had legitimate beefs about the company's stewardship in its drilling operations in the 1970's in the Amazon.  However, all semblance of principle has gone right out the window in a gigantic money grab.

A while back, it was reported that environmentalists (featured in the movie "Crude" were captured in the outtakes of the movie discussing how they lied about the science to the courts in order to score a big payday (bonus points for Obama appointing one of the fraudsters to the National Academy of Sciences).  See the link for the video evidence.

Past fraud revelations have cast doubt on the key scientific report submitted to the court as part of the proceedings, a report that is now known to have been ghost-written by the plaintiffs.  However, supporters of the judgement against Chevron have argued that the judge has always claimed that this study did not sway his decision in the case.  Now we know what did sway his decision:

Today new allegations of deceit and wrongdoing were leveled against the plaintiffs' lawyers bringing the already deeply troubled environmental suit against Chevron in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, which stems from Texaco's oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon between 1964 and 1992. (Texaco was acquired by Chevron in 2001.)

In Manhattan federal district court this morning, Chevron filed the declaration of a former Ecuadorian judge, Alberto Guerra, who describes how he and a second former judge, Nicolás Zambrano, allegedly allowed the plaintiffs lawyers to ghostwrite their entire 188-page, $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron in exchange for a promise of $500,000 from the anticipated recovery.