Chevron and attorney Steven Donziger have filed their final arguments with the federal judge who must decide an extraordinary racketeering lawsuit the oil company brought against Donziger over his efforts to collect a $9 billion judgment in Ecuador.
As is typical in this decades-long battle, the two sides agree on almost nothing. Chevron says it’s the victim of an audacious shakedown scheme in which Donziger enlisted Ecuadorean villagers to serve as cut-out plaintiffs for a lawsuit that would largely benefit himself and outside financiers, including billionaire online poker magnate J. Russell DeLeon.