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Opposing Ecuador’s Remediation

After failing to clean up their oil operations for years, Ecuador’s state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, finally began to “fulfill their contract, their cleanup contract, with Texaco,” but plaintiffs’ lawyers worried (346 KB) that the cleanup efforts would “undermine [their] legal position.” They worried that the realistic budget of the Petroecuador remediation would undercut their ability to force a large judgment in the case. In an email with the subject line “WORRISOME,” Pablo Fajardo, the plaintiffs’ lead Ecuadorian counsel, warned that a newspaper was reporting that the remediation (encompassing an area far larger than the area at issue in the case), would cost an “extremely low” $96 million. Even this estimate was too high: Petroecuador recently announced plans to remediate all the existing sites in the Ecuadorian Amazon and estimated the cost would be only $70 million.

Fearful that Chevron would, in Fajardo’s words, “say that the state finally assumed its duty and is going to clean up what it ought to,” plaintiffs’ attorney Steven Donziger told Fajardo “to go to [Ecuadorian President Rafael] Correa to put an end to this (2.6 MB) s— once and for all.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers recognized that they could not publicly oppose Petroecuador’s cleanup because they would “just look like a bunch of bigots[:] we claim that we are just looking for an environmental restoration, and we are opposing it.” (531 KB) So they once again lied, submitting a letter to the Lago Agrio court over the “independent” expert’s signature, requesting that the court order the government to halt remediation activities.

The plaintiffs’ own documents show that the lawyers have no plans to use any damages they receive for remediation, but rather long ago formulated a plan to “keep the proceeds out of Ecuador.”

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Falsified reporting of technical findings facilitated #Ecuador #fraud against Chevron, scientist for the #Ecuadorian plaintiffs testified: https://t.co/ynD1D00eXt https://t.co/4ETiia3BC0 AmazonPost photo
Members of indigenous communities in the Amazon in Ecuador would like to know: What happened to the more than $20M reportedly raised on their behalf by now-disbarred NY lawyer Steven Donziger? #FollowtheMoney
https://t.co/z9Zcht7zgh
#Factsmatter: An international arbitration panel found ‘no cogent evidence’ supporting #Ecuador’s claim that #Texaco failed to comply with terms of remediation in #Amazon. https://t.co/7TqQ6sJhik
The @WSJ sums this case up nicely, “[Steven Donziger] and his team fabricated evidence, promised $500,000 to an #Ecuadorean judge to rule in their favor, ghostwrote much of the final verdict and took other actions that ‘perverted’ the course of #justice. Mr. Donziger disputes the… https://t.co/soQ1qreULA
Shameless. Disbarred and convicted of criminal contempt of court for bribing an Ecuadorian judge in an attempted extortion scheme, @SDonziger is nonetheless accepting invitations to speak at #climate rallies. Read more about this adjudicated racketeer: https://t.co/5eac0lRmN7

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