From <a href="https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/40738-U-S-Judge-Kaplan-Approved-Secret-Chevron-Payments-to-Court-Official-Who-Swayed-RICO-Case-for-Company" rel="nofollow">https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/40738-U-S-Judge-Kapla...</a><p>>The evidence demonstrates that Chevron sent the funds in 2013 to the account of Max Gitter, a court-appointed Special Master who at the time was working as Senior Counsel at the high-profile corporate law firm Cleary Gottlieb. Gitter is a personal friend and former law partner of Lewis A. Kaplan, the controversial federal judge who presided over the Chevron “racketeering” (or RICO) case and who repeatedly has been accused of bias in favor of the oil giant in its multiyear attempt to try to taint a $9.5 billion environmental judgment against it handed down by Ecuadorian courts.<p>>Gitter and an associate were secretly billing Chevron a total of $1,330 per hour for their work sitting in weeks of depositions leading up to the civil RICO trial, which began in October 2013. That amount is more than many of the indigenous peoples in Ecuador who won the judgment make in one year, said Patricio Salazar, the Ecuadorian lawyer for the Front for the Defense of the Amazon (FDA), the group that represents the affected communities.<p>I think it's 100% clear cut what's going on here
> Even though the ruling was subsequently upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, Chevron immediately made clear that it would not be paying the judgment. Instead, Chevron moved its assets out of the country, making it impossible for the Ecuadorians to collect.<p>WTF? A nation state couldn’t have seized the assets? It seems that multinational megacorps are truly more powerful than and above the law in small countries these days.
<a href="https://www.chevron.com/corporate-responsibility" rel="nofollow">https://www.chevron.com/corporate-responsibility</a><p>Is it any wonder that I'm extremely jaded with any corporation's public speech about how they care or how they're a responsible citizen? At the end of the day, corporate incentives are driven by shareholders and most shareholders are short-term driven, and only cry out after disasters happen, never before.<p>Most corporations these days feel no different from tobacco companies talking about caring about consumer health.
Wow this sounds crazy. He won a lawsuit in Ecuador, so the company got a judge in Manhattan New York to put him on house arrest? Isn't that overstepping their jurisdiction and abuse of power? Seems like a huge miscarriage of justice. Didn't even know this was possible unless there's something I'm missing here? Sounds like someone is acting out of bounds here.
Interesting that there's no mention of the documentary "Crude" at all. For those unfamiliar, it was a (very pro-Donziger ) documentary that seemed to suggest Donziger was crossing some ethical boundaries. Chevron sued to obtain outtakes and unused footage, and the result was extremely damning for Donziger . He's on tape, talking to a documentary crew, admitting to much of what he was later accused of: <a href="http://opiniojuris.org/2010/08/04/chevron%E2%80%99s-explosive-filing-on-collusion-between-plaintiffs-and-ecuadorian-court-appointed-expert/" rel="nofollow">http://opiniojuris.org/2010/08/04/chevron%E2%80%99s-explosiv...</a>
One thing I'm confused about is why he's charged with criminal contempt.<p>> To Donziger, who had already endured 19 days of depositions and given Chevron large portions of his case file, the request was beyond the pale, and he appealed it on the grounds that it would require him to violate his commitments to his clients. Still, Donziger said he’d turn over the devices if he lost the appeal.<p>He said he would obey the order if he lost the appeal. But the article doesn't say what happened to the appeal, is it ongoing, is it over, who won?
This article is obscenely misleading. Skip the narrative, and go straight to the 500 page Southern District of New York opinion finding that Donzinger procured the Ecuador judgment through extortion and fraud: <a href="http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecuador-Opinion-3.4.14.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecua...</a><p>> Upon consideration of all of the evidence, including the credibility of the witnesses
– though several of the most important declined to testify – the Court finds that Donziger began his involvement in this controversy with a desire to improve conditions in the area in which his Ecuadorian clients live. To be sure, he sought also to do well for himself while doing good for others, but there was nothing wrong with that. In the end, however, he and the Ecuadorian lawyers he led corrupted the Lago Agrio case. They submitted fraudulent evidence. They coerced one judge, first to use a court-appointed, supposedly impartial, “global expert” to make an overall damages assessment and, then, to appoint to that important role a man whom Donziger hand-picked and paid to “totally play ball” with the LAPs. They then paid a Colorado consulting firm secretly to write all or most of the global expert’s report, falsely presented the report as the work of the court-appointed and supposedly impartial expert, and told half-truths or worse to U.S. courts in attempts to prevent exposure of that and other wrongdoing. Ultimately, the LAP team wrote the Lago Agrio court’s Judgment themselves and promised $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favor and sign their judgment. If ever there were a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it.<p>Subsequently, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague found that the Chevron judgment was procured by fraud and should not be enforced: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/14/dutch-high-court-finds-for-chevron-over-ecuador/#68208c1b6723" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/14/dutch-...</a><p>> And last week, on April 12, 2019, the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision. Last week's decision means that the five arbitral awards are no longer subject to challenge. This includes the BIT Tribunal's interim awards ordering Ecuador to “take all measures necessary” to prevent or suspend enforcement of the Lago Agrio Judgment worldwide and declaring Ecuador in breach of international law for having failed to voluntarily do so.
I don't know who's right here, but it is suspicious that The Intercept's article doesn't even mention the judgement for Chevron from the The Hague's arbitration panel. <a href="https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/stories/documents/international-tribunal-rules-for-chevron-in-ecuador-case.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/stories/documents/in...</a>
This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything.<p>We have documents alleging person X said Y, because of Z. Without any real first-hand knowledge, none of us actually know how reputable the justice system is in Ecuador, how plausible bribery is, or much at all. First hand, all we know is web-pages on the internet.<p>I think maybe it's best to take a step back from this specific case and ask "What policies could make bribery harder in general across the board?" Is there a way to build a system (e.g. justice-system, news-system) that results in less ambiguity?
<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_Corporation#Environmental_damage_in_Ecuador" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_Corporation#Environm...</a><p>For context on this decision. Some people worship corporations, and we should remember that those people value paper dollars over human lives.
Chevron messed up the environment for farmers, Donziger broke the law to make them pay for what they did, and Chevron moved assets and left.<p>The losers are the farmers who have to clean that mess up. A lot happened and we are back at the exact same problem.<p>Question: does any of what happened in Chevron vs Donziger really matter?
So a US judge, which seems extremely likely to be taking bribes himself, convicted a lawyer in bribing a judge according to a single bribed witness. So ironic...<p>This judge needs to be thoroughly investigated on his connections to Chevron.
I know plenty of people will dismiss it as a right wing publication, but the case against Chevron get weirder and weirder the deeper to you. Both sides are up to some some shady shit[1]<p><i>After a lengthy exploration of bribery, money laundering, and other corruption, Judge Kaplan concludes: “The decision in the Lago Agrio case was obtained by corrupt means. The defendants here may not be allowed to benefit from that in any way. The order entered today will prevent them from doing so.”</i><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/chevron-case-shakedown-ecuador-roger-waters/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/chevron-case-shakedow...</a>
the law as a system of rule to organize society is failing (another example is those kids prosecuted for child porn because they took pictures of themselves before being over the age of consent).<p>money rules society, and legality works for money; at the sime time, money as a system is encoded and enforced by the legal system.<p>we have built a civilization/socity which has trapped us. the matrix is not made out of computers but of corporate institutions. by this point most corporations of this magnitude are pretty much autonomous, neither their shareholders nor the justice systems can reign them in.
On the one hand, this sounds bad for Chevron. On the other hand, what is the probability that corruption happened in an Ecuadorian court vs a US court? It seems to me somewhat more likely that the Ecuadorian court was corrupt here, than that Chevron managed to influence a US judge to this degree.<p>Of note, he could simply turn over his phone and this would end. There is no assertion here that he is protecting some witness from harm. The fact that he is unwilling to do that should give us some pause.