The Amazon Post is maintained by Chevron to express the company’s views and opinions on a fraudulent lawsuit against the company in Ecuador.
To learn the facts, click here.
The Amazon Post provides news, information, and Chevron’s views on the fraud committed by disbarred American attorney Steven Donziger in the Chevron Ecuador lawsuit.
After his fraud was exposed, Steven Donziger was disbarred from the practice of law for what a New York Court called “egregious misdeeds.” Numerous courts have found Donziger to have lied, fabricated evidence and offered bribes to Ecuadorian judges to procure a verdict against Chevron in the Lago Agrio region of the Amazon
Donziger’s Ecuador verdict has been found to be unenforceable in courts around the world, due to Donziger’s illegal actions that include fraud, bribery, and evidence tampering.
Steven Donziger’s false allegations against Chevron Corporation in Ecuador have been called the “legal fraud of the century” by the Wall Street Journal.
Here are the facts:
In February 2011, an $18 billion judgment (later reduced to $9.5 billion) was issued by an Ecuadorian court against Chevron Corporation, claiming Chevron was responsible for alleged environmental and social harms in the Amazon region. Chevron appealed on the grounds that the ruling lacked scientific merit and ignored overwhelming evidence of fraud and misconduct by Donziger and his legal team.
Based on overwhelming evidence of fraud and misconduct throughout the Ecuadorian lawsuit and trial, Chevron initiated a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In March 2014, the court ruled that the Ecuadorian judgment was the product of fraud and racketeering activity, finding it unenforceable in the United States.
The nearly 500-page ruling found that Steven Donziger, the now disbarred American lawyer behind the Ecuadorian lawsuit, violated the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in obtaining the Ecuadorian judgment. Among other things, the court found that Steven Donziger committed extortion, money laundering, wire fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, witness tampering and obstruction of justice, and that he tried to cover up his and his associates’ crimes.
The court found that Donziger and his team “wrote the [Ecuadorian] court’s Judgment themselves and promised $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favor and sign their judgment.” As U.S. federal judge Lewis Kaplan stated in the court’s ruling:
“The wrongful actions of (Steven) Donziger and his Ecuadorian legal team would be offensive to the laws of any nation that aspires to the rule of law, including Ecuador – and they knew it. Indeed, one Ecuadorian legal team member, in a moment of panicky candor, admitted that if documents exposing just part of what they had done were to come to light, ‘apart from destroying the proceeding, all of us, your attorneys, might go to jail.’ It is time to face the facts.”
Since that time, Donziger has lost in every courtroom. Decisions by courts in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, Gibraltar and an international tribunal in The Hague confirm that the fraudulent Ecuadorian judgment should be unenforceable in any court that respects the rule of law. An international tribunal in The Hague, in a unanimous ruling – including an arbitrator appointed by Ecuador – found that the Ecuadorian judgment violated international law and should not be enforced anywhere in the world. Even the Ecuadoran government in 2020 acknowledges the judgement was a fraud.
Steven Donziger continues to falsely profess his innocence. He continues to try to shift focus away from his fraud by attacking judges who rule against him, ignoring the inconvenient truth that decisions against him have been upheld on appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.