Richard Cabrera
Friday, February 12th 2010
Earlier in the week it was revealed that the author of a report recommending Chevron pay $27 billion in damages has a conflict of interest that he illegally hid from the court. As it turns out, Richard Cabrera, the report’s author, is the majority owner of an oil field remediation company in Ecuador that stands to gain financially from a judgment against Chevron.
Cabrera has suggested a wholly illegitimate and unsubstantiated damage recommendation against Chevron in excess of $27 billion. Cabrera was not only paid solely by the plaintiffs, but he openly relied on them to staff his effort while seeking to obstruct Chevron’s representatives from even observing his work. In fact, major portions of his submissions to the court are cribbed from the plaintiffs’ own submissions, if not written by them directly. His work product is devoid of scientific content, lacks even the most basic evidentiary support, and assesses monetary relief for alleged environmental damage and health claims he has never even bothered to investigate, inspect, or verify.
In addition to those outlined above, below is a list of other Cabrera Report flaws:
Lack of Causation
Cabrera completely ignored his court-ordered mandate to determine causation and chronology of environmental conditions. Instead, he just arbitrarily assigned liability to Texaco for every instance of alleged environmental impact in the former concession areas. By ignoring chronology and causation, Cabrera even makes Texaco liable for environmental impact caused solely by Petroecuador in the last 20 years.
Failure to Inspect and Falsifying “Evidence”
Cabrera ignored court orders that he must inspect every site, visiting only 48 of 316 wells and one of 19 production stations. Instead, Cabrera reviewed aerial photos to identify pits and used those photos incompetently and dishonestly. For example, Cabrera submitted certain aerial photos with his report and declared that various items in the photos — like trees, tanks and shadows — were pits. He also submitted photos of pits constructed by Petroecuador after 1990, backdated the photos to the 1970s and declared that the pits were constructed earlier by Texaco Petroleum. Cabrera, therefore, fraudulently overstated the number of pits.
Arbitrary Determination of Remediation Scope
With no justification, Cabrera arbitrarily concluded that 80 percent of well pits and 100 percent of production station pits need to be remediated, regardless of past or current remediation efforts. Cabrera then further fabricated and overstated the magnitude of remediation required for each pit, arbitrarily assuming that each pit needs to be remediated to a depth of four meters (13.12 ft) and that an additional area around each pit equal to 50 percent of the pit surface area also needs to be remediated.
Gross Overstatement of Remediation Cost
Cabrera grossly overstated the cost to remediate pits. Though Petroecuador has been remediating pits to Ecuador standards for approximately $85,000 per pit, Cabrera recommends remediation costs of $2.743 billion — over 150 times the Petroecuador budget of $18 million for this work.
For more information on other elements contained within Cabrera’s $27 billion damage report, please use the following hyperlinks.
It is clear the Ecuadoran court handling the lawsuit against Chevron has abandoned the due process guarantees mandated by Ecuadorian law, eliminated the plaintiffs’ burden of proof, and substituted in its place the work of Richard Cabrera. Chevron has consistently argued that it is not getting a fair trial in Ecuador. Evidence presented to the court shows Texaco Petroleum’s remediation was thorough and complete. The Amazon Defense Front has teamed up with the government of Ecuador to try to shift the liability of Petroecuador to Chevron by pressuring the company into an unjust settlement using a biased and improperly influenced court and a partisan and unqualified “independent” analyst.
Thursday, February 11th 2010
New revelation of a conflict of interest for the author of a report recommending that Chevron pay $27 billion in damages in the long-running trial in Ecuador has prompted a deliberately misleading response from the Amazon Defense Front, which is the named financial beneficiary of any judgment in the case.
Cabrera has a previously undisclosed majority ownership interest in a company registered to do business with Petroecuador. Petroecuador is the state owned oil company, chief polluter in the region, and beneficiary of Cabrera’s “findings.” This evidence raises additional, serious questions about Cabrera’s independence and completely undermines the integrity of his report.
Seeing its potential payday at risk, the Amazon Defense Front scrambled to respond via press release. While attempting to sidestep the issue, the Amazon Defense Front does not deny that Cabrera improperly failed to disclose his conflict of interest at the time of his appointment or thereafter. Nor does the Amazon Defense Front deny that had Cabrera’s ownership interest been properly disclosed, it would have been disqualifying. Below is a response to four of the many misleading and inaccurate statements from the Amazon Defense Front press release:
“Cabrera disclosed to the court that he owned a clean-up company before his appointment as Special Master. This fact was properly cited by the court as one of the reasons he was qualified to do the damages assessment.”
This is a yet another of the Amazon Defense Front’s blatant attempts to mislead the public.
Exhibit 4 from the filing contains everything that Cabrera has disclosed. Nowhere does Cabrera disclose the fact that he was a co-founder, general manager, majority stockholder, and legal representative of CAMPET at the time of his appointment as an “independent” technician or during his work for the court. CAMPET is a soil remediation company and preapproved contractor to Petroecuador. Cabrera affirmatively swore to the court that he had no conflicts of interest. This has shown to be untrue by virtue of his financial interests in CAMPET.
The Amazon Defense Front’s statement is intended to misrepresent Cabrera’s disclosure about working for a different remediation company, CONGEMINPA, prior to his appointment. Cabrera disclosed that his work with CONGEMINPA ended in 2003, and Cabrera had also sold all of his stock in GONGEMINMPA in 2003, years before his 2007 appointment in this case. This past connection to a remediation company did not present a conflict of interest at the time of his appointment. The Amazon Defense Front’s statement is meant to create the false impression that Cabrera disclosed his interest in CAMPET, the company he continued to own, manage, and legally represent during his entire tenure as a supposedly “independent” expert in the case. But he did not make any such disclosure. In fact, German Yanez, the judge who appointed Cabrera, told Dow Jones Newswires Feb. 9 he didn’t know about CAMPET or whether the company’s registration as a bid contractor for Petroecuador constituted any conflict of interest.
“All I know is what I saw in his curriculum (vitae),” said Yanez. “If there’s missing information, I don’t know why.”
“Chevron thought so highly of Cabrera’s qualifications that it accepted him as a court-appointed expert in an earlier part of the case and paid his fees as required by court rules.”
This is factually incorrect.
Cabrera was appointed by the court in an earlier phase of the trial, but he performed no work and at no time has Chevron paid Cabrera for anything. On the contrary, the plaintiffs paid Cabrera more than $200,000 for his subsequent work.
Chevron has repeatedly and unwaveringly questioned Cabrera’s qualifications since his original involvement in the case, has opposed his report, and has repeatedly told the court that his damages assessment is without basis, is biased, and was developed with and co-written by the plaintiffs. At no time has Chevron ever “thought highly of Cabrera’s qualifications” to be an expert in this case.
“The fact Cabrera’s company is qualified to bid on clean-up contracts offered by Ecuador’s state-owned oil company is irrelevant. That company, Petroecuador, is not a party to the case against Chevron and would have no role in any eventual cleanup.”
This is factually incorrect.
Petroecuador was the majority partner in the consortium and is responsible for every site in question. Moreover, no remediation work in the oil producing region could occur without Petroecuador’s active involvement, participation, and authorization. Simply put, nothing could happen in Petroecuador’s oil fields, including a remediation ordered by the court, without Petroecuador.
Meanwhile, the government of Ecuador has already acknowledged that it expects to participate in any prospective remediation work. At a September 2009 press conference, Ecuador’s Prosecutor General, Washington Pesantez said, “Although I don’t have the exact figures, 10 percent would go to the plaintiffs if Chevron is found guilty; 90 percent would be delivered to the State for remediation or bio-remediation activities that would serve to correct biologic and chemical mechanisms…”
In addition, “the fact Cabrera’s company is qualified to bid on clean-up contracts offered by” Petroecuador is extremely relevant: — Cabrera’s report attempts at every turn to exonerate Petroecuador for 20 years of sloppy practices. In his report Cabrera exonerates Petroecuador of the current environmental conditions in the region, grossly inflates the scope of remediation and costs of the work, and even calls on the court to award $375 million to upgrade Petroecuador’s infrastructure. Cabrera’s company’s registration to do work for Petroecuador provides the perfect incentive for Cabrera to go to such absurd lengths to lavish benefits on Petroecuador in his report, and the perfect opportunity for Petroecuador to return the favor.
“Cabrera by virtue of his role in the case would be barred from having a role in a future clean-up.”
This statement is inherently contradictory and is made without any factual support. First the Amazon Defense Front says there is no conflict at all, and then it says that Cabrera does indeed have a conflict of interest. His financial stake in remediation explains why Cabrera, on at least ten different occasions, concealed from the court his conflict of interest — a violation of Ecuador law. Accordingly, Cabrera’s report should be rejected and Cabrera’s connection to Petroecuador should be investigated.
Chevron has consistently argued that it is not getting a fair trial in Ecuador. Evidence presented to the court shows Texaco Petroleum’s remediation was thorough and complete. Amazon Defense Front has teamed up with the government of Ecuador to try to shift the liability of Petroecuador to Chevron by pressuring the company into an unjust settlement using a biased and improperly influenced court and a partisan and unqualified “independent” analyst.
Tuesday, February 9th 2010
Chevron has revealed new information showing that the author of a report recommending the company pay $27 billion in damages has a conflict of interest that he illegally hid from the court. As it turns out, Richard Cabrera, the report’s author, is the majority owner of an oil field remediation company that stands to gain financially from a judgment against Chevron.
Records from 2003-2008 show that Cabrera is co-founder, general manager, majority stockholder, and legal representative of an oilfield remediation company, CAMPET, which is registered to perform oilfield remediation and other services for Petroecuador. Cabrera failed to disclose these business interests as required by law.
In his report, Cabrera absolves Petroecuador of any responsibility or remediation obligations associated with past or present oil operations. Yet, Petroecuador was the majority owner of the Petroecuador-Texaco Petroleum consortium which operated until mid-1992. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that Petroecuador has spilled millions of gallons of oil since taking over exclusive ownership and operations.
Instead, Cabrera exclusively attributes pollution in the Amazon region of Ecuador to Texaco Petroleum, now owned by Chevron. Cabrera’s report says Chevron, because it acquired Texaco Petroleum in 2001, is solely liable for $27 billion in damages, citing grossly inflated remediation costs while ignoring Petroecuador’s role in oil operations and its well-documented poor environmental performance. These findings make no sense as a matter of Ecuadorian law or common sense, but are consistent with furthering the interests of Petroecuador, as well as Cabrera’s.
Not only did Cabrera hide his financial interests in the remediation company, he affirmatively represented to the court that he did not have any impediment or conflict that would affect his performance as an “independent” court-appointed witness. Moreover, Cabrera knowingly omitted his interest in CAMPET, as well as CAMPET’s status as a registered Petroecuador contractor, in his submissions to the court. Finally, Cabrera further misled the court by accepting his appointment, which required an explicit acknowledgment of his duties to the court as an impartial analyst—something Cabrera could not have done in good faith, given his financial interests.
Due to the remediation company’s relationship with Ecuador’s state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, Chevron has called upon the court to immediately reject the work of Richard Cabrera on the grounds that he knowingly hid his relationship and that he stands to gain from what was supposed to be unbiased work for the court.
Friday, August 28th 2009
“They look at individual cases of cancer and say it can not be traced back to the oil that was spilled by Chevron,” he said. “It’s true that the exact correlation cannot be proved.” – Pablo Fajardo, lead trial lawyer. The (Eugene, OR) Register-Guard: 8/27/09
In a statement made during an August 26, 2009 speech, Ecuadorian attorney Pablo Fajardo once again admitted that the activists and trial lawyers involved in the lawsuit against Chevron cannot prove the cancer claims they have made against Chevron.
A number of individuals representing the plaintiffs have made similar statements. In a May 12, 2009 interview with Radio CRE, CRE Noticias, Luis Yanza, Legal Coordinator of Amazon Defense Coalition said, “But I should clarify one thing: the cancer subject is relatively complementary because in the trial we don’t have to prove that anyone died of cancer…”
Similarly, in comments posted on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, Karen Hinton, U.S.-based spokesperson for the Amazon Defense Coalition said, “The lawsuit does not seek to prove health claims because of the associated costs; it has been expensive enough to prove the contamination itself.”
Neither the plaintiffs’ attorneys nor the court appointee, Richard Cabrera, have submitted any medical evidence that a single cancer case or death has occurred. Cabrera submitted only a summary of opinion survey results from which he extrapolated approximately $9.5 billion for alleged cancer deaths. Not only is his alleged cancer death rate more than 250 times higher than that reported by the Ecuadorian government for this region of the Amazon, he fails to name a single patient or provide any death certificates or medical records.
In 2006, Cristobal Bonifaz, the attorney that originally filed the lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador sued Chevron in a U.S. federal court for the Northern District of California alleging his new clients developed cancer as a result of Texaco’s operations. In 2007, after some of the plaintiffs admitted that they had never been diagnosed with cancer, the presiding federal judge dismissed the case, fined Bonifaz $45,000, sanctioned the lawyers, and ordered them to submit the ruling to their state bars.
If the plaintiffs are trying to extort over $9 billion for claims they admit they cannot prove–what else are they fabricating?
Monday, June 1st 2009
FICTION:
“A court-appointed team of 15 experts that recently reviewed almost 200,000 pages of evidence in the case concluded that the contamination has produced more than 1,400 deaths from cancer and an undetermined number of skin diseases, miscarriages, and respiratory illnesses.” - Amazon Defense Coalition Press Release: 5/1/09
FACT:
The court did not appoint a “team of experts.” The court appointed one man, Richard Cabrera, a mining engineer with no oil-field remediation experience and hence unqualified to conduct the mandated work of the court. Richard Cabrera was the only person who submitted reports to the court in which he fabricated a $27 billion damage recommendation against Chevron. While Mr. Cabrera claimed that he had the help of 15 individuals, notably missing from the Cabrera report were their signatures endorsing their work. In fact, only one person would put his name on the report – Richard Cabrera. By contrast, Chevron’s experts are not only renowned specialists in their fields, they all signed their individual studies rebutting Cabrera’s findings and continue to stand firmly and proudly behind their work. In order to understand what scientific findings have greater credibility, we urge readers to take a look at the qualifications of the experts used by Chevron and those listed by the court’s “independent expert” Richard Cabrera as assisting his work.
