MANHATTAN – A former Ecuadorean judge testified Wednesday that he secretly wrote “a couple dozen” rulings for the judge who in 2011 handed down the world’s largest environmental award of $19 billion against Chevron.
Alberto Guerra said that his eventual successor as judge on the case, Nicolas Zambrano, paid him $1,000 a month “from his own pocket” to ghostwrite the orders, including the recusal order that put Zambrano on the bench.
Guerra was testifying on the sixth day of trial in Chevron’s racketeering lawsuit that accuses attorney Steven Donziger of bribing Zambrano with $500,000 and skewing test results to hold Chevron liable for massive oil pollution in the Amazon.
