An Oil Company Just Earned A Huge Settlement After Environmentalists Brought False Charges

[donnay]

An Oil Company Just Earned A Huge Settlement After Environmentalists Brought False Charges

Tim Pearce


The Supreme Court of Gibraltar awarded the oil company Chevron $38 million Friday for damages related to charges alleging the company contaminated the Amazon region of Ecuador.

An Ecuador court issued an $18 billion judgement against Chevron in February 2011 for environmental and social harm the company allegedly caused to the Amazon. The amount was later reduced to $9.5 billion, but a U.S. district court in New York nullified the judgement due to fraudulent and illegal activities by Steven Donziger, the lead American lawyer behind the lawsuit, according to the district court ruling.

Donziger had set up a company in Gibraltar, Amazonia Recovery Ltd., through which to funnel the funds he and others thought they would win from the Chevron case. The Gibraltar court rendered judgment on Donziger’s associates and Amazonia while issuing a permanent injunction between them and the case, stopping them from participating any further.


“In issuing this decision, the Supreme Court is holding the perpetrators of this fraudulent enterprise accountable for their actions,” Chevron Vice President and general counsel R. Hewitt Pate said in a statement. “In courtrooms around the world, this fraudulent scheme against Chevron Corporation continues to implode.”

The Gibraltar court’s decision follows a similar one in Dec. 2015 when the court awarded Chevron $28 billion in damages from Donziger and Amazonia and issued an injunction between them and the case. Pablo Fajardo, Luis Yanza and Ermel Chavez – Donziger’s partners in the scheme – tried to keep the pressure on Chevron by working through the company. They ignored the first judgement, resulting in the court leveling a new, higher judgment against them and the Amazonia.

The New York district court found that while Donziger had initiated the case with good intentions, he corrupted the process through telling half-truths, outright lies, and using fake evidence and witnesses.

“If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it,” the district court ruling said.

Oil companies are under increasing pressure in the United States as various states, cities and municipalities attempt to hold select companies responsible for damage from natural disasters. The lawsuits claim the oil companies are contributing to climate change, in turn contributing to more severe damage from weather events such at hurricanes and storms.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/05/26/ch...zen.yandex.com

[Pauls' Revere]

bump.

[Firestarter]

Disbarred American lawyer Steven Donziger, who won a $9.5 billion lawsuit against Chevron Corp for polluting the Ecuadorian rainforest, has been sentenced to 6 months in prison on contempt charges for refusing to turn over his computer and other electronic devices.

Donziger, who has been held in home confinement for 2 years, will probably appeal the court's decision: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/...-contempt-case

[Firestarter]

American lawyer Steven Donziger that was disbarred and sentenced to house arrest for actually winning a $9.5 billion lawsuit against Chevron for polluting Ecuador?
Even though this story has more drama than the average blockbuster movie it didn't quite get the media attention it deserved (including from most of the so-called "alternative" media).

In 2011, the Ecuadorian court ordered Chevron to pay indigenous plaintiffs $9.5 billion for causing serious harm to their health by illegally dumping 16 billion gallons of deadly oil waste.
Chevron moved all its assets out of Ecuador so it wouldn't have to pay...
Steven Donziger, who won the case probably for a share of the profits, then tried to have the billions confiscated from Chevron in Argentina, Brazil and Canada, but as the courts in these so-called "democratic" countries protect the crimes by the big corporations they simply swept Donziger's petitions aside.
Chevron hasn't paid a cent.

Then things got really, really ugly...
Chevron simply bribed the former Ecuadorean judge Alberto Guerra. Based on Guerra's lies, in 2011, Chevron filed a civil RICO (racketeering) lawsuit against Donziger in New York City, accusing him of bribing an Ecuadorean judge, ghostwriting the damages judgment, and "fixing" scientific studies, with $500,000.
In 2013, Chevron moved Guerra to the US from Ecuador, all expenses paid with a monthly salary of $12,000 for "expenses".

In 2015, Guerra testified to an international tribunal that he had lied and changed his story multiple times in the RICO trial to frame Donzinger. Guerra admitted that Donziger had not bribed him, and that large parts of Guerra's testimony in the RICO case were completely bogus.
You can understand (or not?) that the corrupt courts simply swept aside Guerra admitting to lying in a court of law to frame Donzinger, so in 2018, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague (home of corruption, money laundering and fraud) ruled that the $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuador was marked by fraud and corruption and "should not be recognised or enforced by the courts of other States".

So in 2019, Judge Lewis Kaplan asked the Southern District Court of New York to criminally prosecute Donzinger after he had been found guilty in the RICO case (based on the lies in court by Alberto Guerra!).
After the Southern District Court of New York declined, in a move "virtually unprecedented", Kaplan appointed the private law firm Seward & Kissel, which had Chevron as a client.
In other words: Chevron's lawyers were now prosecuting Steven Donziger for winning the $9.5 billion lawsuit against Chevron!

In another "unprecedented" move, Donziger has been placed under house arrest since August 2019 awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, after he dared to appeal against Kaplan's RICO judgement.
On 26 July 2021, US district judge Loretta Preska found Donziger guilty on 6 contempt charges, he could now be sentenced to 6 months in jail (Donziger's request for a trial by a jury of peers was denied for some reason): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger


I had previously posted about the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, who was fired (technically forced to resign) by Trump in 2020, after he refused to prosecute Donziger: US-attorney-Berman-fired-after-investigating-Trump-cronies

[Firestarter]

Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the RICO case against Steven Donziger, had investments in funds with Chevron holdings, and suggested to Chevron to file a racketeering suit against Donziger.
Kaplan then appointed Chevron's law firm to act as the "public" prosecutor of Donziger. Law firm Seward & Kissel not only got paid by Chevron, but also received $464,000 from the taxpayer for this "public" work (in 2019 and 2020 alone, and more in 2021).


Kaplan then selected Judge Preska to sentence Donziger. Preska is a member of the pro-corporate Federalist Society, to which Chevron is a major donor: https://www.makechevroncleanup.com/p...-a-misdemeanor
(https://archive.is/ht1z3)