CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Chevron
Video Release May Backfire
23 Corporate Crime Reporter 43(10), November 9, 2009
In late August, Chevron issued a press release.
It was titled – “Videos Reveal Serious Judicial Misconduct and Political Influence in Ecuador Lawsuit.”
Chevron said that it provided authorities in Ecuador and the U.S. with video recordings that reveal a $3 million bribery scheme implicating the judge presiding over the environmental lawsuit currently pending against the company and individuals who identify themselves as representatives of the Ecuadorian government and its ruling party.
Chevron said that in the videos, “the judge confirms that he will rule against Chevron and that appeals by the energy company will be denied – even though the trial is ongoing and evidence is still being received. A purported party official also states that lawyers from the executive branch have been sent to assist the judge in writing the decision.”
The Judge – Juan Nunez – has since recused himself from the case.
But Steven Donziger believes that release of the videos may backfire on Chevron.
Donziger has been working for 16 years on the case.
He’s one of the lead lawyers representing the indigenous people of the Ecuador rainforest against Chevron.
“We believe this has all the tell tale signs of a Nixon era dirty tricks operation. It doesn’t add up on a whole host of levels,” Donziger told Corporate Crime Reporter in a wide-ranging interview last week. “Chevron was about to lose a major trial with a multi-million dollar liability. Their local legal team had a high motivation to try to delay or derail that process. The decision was scheduled to come down this month or next month.”
Chevron says that the two men who taped the judge were acting out of civic duty – they were whistleblowers offended by the judge’s behavior.
“That has no credibility,” Donziger shoots back. “These guys have never done any active whistleblowing in their entire lives. One is a convicted drug trafficker. The other was getting paid by Chevron earlier this year. It all stinks to high heaven.”
Donziger says the U.S. Justice Department and the Ecuadoran Attorney General are both investigating the case.
“Have you seen the tapes?” Donziger asks. “You probably haven’t seen the two hours of tapes. In the two meetings where the judge is taped, he is asked thirteen times whether he is going to rule against Chevron. And every time he says he hasn’t decided how he’s going to rule. The last time he’s off camera. And you hear him saying – yes, sir. But he is off camera.”
As for the allegations of bribery, Donziger says “the man in the videotaped involved with this is a man who Chevron claimed was an official of the ruling party in Ecuador.”
“In reality, he’s a car salesman. No one in the government knows who this guy is.”
The initial lawsuit was filed in federal court in New York 16 years ago.
The case was brought against Texaco – which was merged into Chevron in 2001.
“It’s really a boilerplate pollution case on an extraordinary order of magnitude,” Donziger said. “Texaco went into Ecuador in the mid-1960s. The company leased a concession from the government of Ecuador that was enormous in size. It was about the size of Rhode Island – almost 2,000 square miles.”
“They built 356 wells and 22 separation stations throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. And the fundamental problem was they used a variety of substandard operational practices that resulted in what is probably the world’s greatest oil related environmental catastrophe.”
“Over the 26 years that Texaco operated this system, they ended up dumping 18 billion gallons of this toxic wastewater directly into rivers and streams. And they decimated and poisoned this entire area.”
“The cumulative impact of the daily dumping led to huge health problems and life style problems from the indigenous groups. There were six indigenous groups that lived there before Texaco got there. One of them disappeared just after Texaco got there. It no longer exists – the Tetete. The five others were just completely altered in terms of their ability to sustain themselves in the forest. They have had land stolen from them.”
“They can no longer use the forest. The animals they used to hunt have virtually disappeared. They cannot access clean water. Rates of cancer have skyrocketed. You see kids six months old with leukemia. Almost everybody has skin rashes because there is no clean water to bathe in. Even the rainwater is contaminated because of the uncontrolled flaring of gas which produces a black rain phenomenon in this area.”
“So, it has been utter devastation. If you go there, it looks apocalyptic. There are tens of thousands of people living in and around the pollution.”
“The worst part is that – unlike the Exxon Valdez disaster – this was not an accident. It was done deliberately to keep production costs to a bare minimum.”
“If this were the United States, all of these people would probably be moved out of there until it could be cleaned up and the perpetrators of this activity would probably be prosecuted criminally.”
In 2002, the company successfully had the case removed from federal court in Manhattan to Ecuador.
And Donziger says that Chevron realizes it is going to lose the case – so it has sought to delay the inevitable.
And Chevron has launched a massive public relations campaign to undermine the credibility of the Ecuadoran justice system.
“To us, the legal battle is the battle,” Donziger says. “The public relations part is something that Chevron has forced us to devote resources to. They have hired no fewer than five major public relations firms to deal with this problem.”
“They use Edelman. As we understand it from people working with Chevron, Edelman’s plan is to design a major Wal-Mart style campaign against us. It hasn’t been launched. They are developing it. Whether it will be launched and when are open questions.”
“They use Hill & Knowlton. They use Singer Associates in San Francisco. They use Robinson Lerer Montgomery. They use Ogilvy for lobbying in Washington, D.C. They have hired Mac McLarty and Mickey Kantor – Clinton administration officials – to lobby their old agencies.”
“McLarty is lobbying the State Department and the U.S. Trade Representative.”
“Mickey Kantor is lobbying the U.S. trade rep and Congress.”
“Carla Hills, another former trade rep, is lobbying the trade rep on this issue.”
“They use Trent Lott and John Breaux.”
“They use a guy named Brian Pomper. He’s a former staffer to Senator Max Baucus.”
“They are devoting significant resources in Washington to try to enlist the power of the U.S. government to pressure Ecuador’s government to quash the legal case.”
Chevron is being represented by a legal team at Jones Day led by Tim Cullen in Washington, D.C. and a team a King & Spalding.
“Ecuador is nothing more than road kill for Chevron,” Donziger said. “Texaco went in there and operated for 26 years and did all of this dumping with impunity.
They destroyed indigenous groups. They destroyed the Amazon rainforest.”
“Today, in the actual trial, Chevron has decided it can’t win, so it easier to hire high priced lobbyists to taint the judicial system of a foreign country and implicate that country’s elected leader in wrongdoing with no evidence than it is to actually litigate the trial and win it.”
“We don’t believe that Chevron is litigating this in anything approaching an ethical manner. And we also think they have been involved in various dirty tricks operations designed to derail the trial.”
“The critical point is that there is probably no independent court in the world that Chevron would accept. They are going to lose the case based on the evidence and the facts.”
“They try to distract, politicize, and get the U.S. government to pressure Ecuador’s government to interfere with the judiciary of Ecuador and kill the case.”
“They are asking people like Mac McLarty and Mickey Kantor to pressure the Bush administration and now the Obama administration to in turn pressure Ecuador’s president to violate his country’s own Constitution, interfere in this case, quash it, and relieve his country of the lobbying pressure Chevron is generating to cancel trade preferences that the United States extends to Ecuador.”
“If the preferences are cancelled, Ecuador would lose 300,000 to 350,000 jobs.”
“Ecuador is just road kill. They don’t care. Anything that gets in their way they try to run over to get to their objective.”
[For a complete transcript of the Interview with Steven Donziger, see 23 Corporate Crime Reporter 43(10), November 9, 2009, print edition only.]
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