Now that their funders have abandoned them, Steven Donziger’s team is turning to the government of Ecuador to fund their fraudulent scheme. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. this week rejected Ecuador’s challenge to an arbitral award, leaving the Republic in debt to Chevron to the tune of $106 million for commercial claims dating back to the 1990s.
The National Indigenous Confederation of Ecuador is continuing its nearly 400 mile, 300-person march toward Quito in protest over policies by President Rafael Correa. Read more>>
Ecuador Transparente, a website dubbed the “Ecuadorian Wikileaks,” has released 31 documents that could prove systematic spying from the government of President Rafael Correa on opposition politicians, journalists, and activists. Read more>>
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday rejected Ecuador’s challenge to a $96 million international arbitration award in favor of energy giant Chevron Corp, marking the latest twist in a decades-long dispute over the development of oil fields in the South American country. Read more>>
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa called on the police and military Monday to be prepared for destabilizing attempts by opposition groups ahead of a national strike set for mid-August. Read more>>
Wary of an ever-growing state in Ecuador, several indigenous groups have joined a nationwide movement against the government of President Rafael Correa. To demonstrate their resolve, they have decided to embark on a 10-day march all the way from the Amazon to Correa’s office in Quito. Read more>>
Ecuadorian spies may have broken the law by obtaining personal information on MPs, environmentalists, indigenous groups, human rights activists, academics and political opponents of president Rafael Correa who opposed the exploitation of oil from an Amazonian wilderness, according to leaked papers. Read more>>
On the night of July 29, two leaflet bombs exploded in the city of Guayaquil near the offices of two Ecuadorian newspapers, the private El Universo and public El Telégrafo. Flyers scattered at the scene attributed the attack to the self proclaimed National Liberation Front, whose name was previously unknown to locals. Read more>>
But now Mr Correa is running out of money and the citizens are starting to turn against him. In June, in the biggest of many protests, some 350,000 people took to the streets of the port city of Guayaquil to demonstrate against plans to impose punitive additional taxes on inheritances and gains from property transactions. Read more>>
If participating in an international conspiracy to defraud an oil company isn’t enough to ruin your reputation, what would do it? The question arises because work by Stratus Consulting of Boulder — exposed for shameful conduct in Ecuador — is once again at the center of a dispute over a pollution settlement, this time on the East Coast. Environmental critics of a settlement between New Jersey and Exxon-Mobil say it is too low and cite a study by Stratus nearly 10 years ago that reached a vastly higher damage estimate. Read more>>
When a federal judge ruled last year that trial lawyer Steven Donziger’s team engaged in fraud to win a multibillion-dollar environmental lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador, both moral supporters and investors who funded the legal action began to bail. The specific evidence cited by the judge and the negative publicity was too much for backers such as Burford Capital and the Patton Boggs law firm, which renounced their involvement in the lawsuit. But not Amazon Watch, an environmental group dedicated to preserving the Amazon rainforests and fighting climate change that relies on celebrity donors such as actor and director Leonardo DiCaprio and billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer to fund its global work. Read more>>
Opposition leaders are meeting to discuss the future actions they will take against the government of President Rafael Correa. The National United Collective of Workers, Indigenous and Social Organizations, known as Cedocut, have met to evaluate the marches of the past month, review common demands and set the date for a national strike. Read more>>