Historic $18 billion Chevron ruling for 30000 Amazonian human rights

After deliberately contaminating Indigenous Amazonians with billions of gallons of toxic waste for decades, Chevron fined $18 billion for 'environmental crimes and human rights abuses'

After an 18-year legal battle, on Tuesday, an Ecuadorian appellate court upheld a historic $18 billion award against U.S.-based Chevron oil giant for deliberately contaminating the Ecuadorian Amazon and poisoning its people, the largest environmental award ever and the result of a legal battle by some 30,000 Indigenous Peoples and farmers seeking a clean up of contaminated sites plus clean drinking water and health care.

An 18-year legal battle by Ecuadorians, Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action to hold Chevron accountable for what the rights defenders call "egregious environmental crimes and human rights abuses" resulted an Ecuadorian appellate court upholding on Tuesday a historic $18 billion award against Chevron for deliberately contaminating the Ecuadorian Amazon, the largest environmental award ever and major victory for some 30,000 indigenous survivors seeking a clean up of contaminated sites, clean drinking water, and health care.

Amazon Defense Coalition's Karen Hinton, spokeswoman for the plaintiffs, issued a statement saying the latest ruling was “further confirmation of Chevron’s extraordinary greed and criminal misconduct in Ecuador.”

The crimes have been committed in "a remote pocket of the Amazon where the country’s oil industry was founded," Naomi Mapstone reported from Lima on Wednesday for Financial Times (FT).

“After destroying the environment and the entire way of life of five indigenous groups to maximise its profits, Chevron sold almost all of its assets in Ecuador and essentially fled the country.

"Chevron has violated the rights of the communities where it operates, disrespected local laws, intimidated community leaders and judges, lied about basic evidence, tried to defraud the court with junk science, and launched an international lobbying campaign to taint the reputation of Ecuador’s government for allowing its citizens to use their legally protected right to seek accountability in their own courts.” (Financial Times.com)

For the second time, in a jurisdiction of its own choosing, Chevron has been found guilty of widespread oil contamination in Ecuador's Amazon.

Rights defenders say drill and dump has injured for over four decades

"It is a historic triumph for the thousands of victims who have suffered for over four decades from Chevron’s drill-and-dump practices," Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network stated in a written statement Wednesday.

"The ruling once again proves Chevron is responsible for "deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste sludge into local streams and rivers, which thousands depend on for drinking, bathing, and fishing, and created a public health crisis in the rainforest region."

Naomi Mapstone in Lima reported Wednesday "The damages bill represents about one-third of Ecuador’s gross domestic product, making it the most expensive environmental suit in history, although the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill is expected to overtake it."

Attempting to evade accountability for over a decade, Chevron spent hundreds of millions of dollars, exacerbating the suffering of thousands of rainforest residents, including children, with unprecedented diseases that Ecuadorians had never experienced and loss of life.

Chevron has threatened to continue deploying its armies of lawyers with yet more legal stonewalling tactics, still hoping that its unlimited resources can outspend and outlast the course of justice, the rights defenders stated.

"But the guilty verdict sends a loud and clear message: It is time for Chevron to clean up the Ecuadorian Amazon."

Lima reports, "A three-judge panel supported the original court’s order that Chevron pay $8.6bn in damages, which later more than doubled after the company refused to publicly apologise.

"James Craig, a Chevron spokesman, said the company did not believe the Ecuadorean ruling was enforceable 'in any court that observes the rule of law.'

“[Tuesday’s] decision is another glaring example of the politicisation and corruption of Ecuador’s judiciary that has plagued this fraudulent case from the start,” he said."

The Ecuador decision comes as Chevron also faces criminal charges and fines up to U.S. $11 billion in Brazil for its negligence in its operations. If convicted, Chevron will be permanently banned from business in Brazil.

The damages bill represents about one-third of Ecuador’s gross domestic product, making it the most expensive environmental suit in history, although the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill is expected to overtake it.

In 1972, everything changed for the Ecuadoran locals, similar to changes Louisiana bayou people experienced when oil men arrived.

On Feb. 27, Deborah Dupré reported on an investigation by Greg Palast that the BBC Television presented:

"[Chevron] oil businessmen encouraged the tribal people in the Ecuador rainforest to rub oil on their skin to heal their aches and pains.

"'They gave us candy, sugar, diesel fuel and cheese. The cheese smelled funny. We threw it into the jungle,' said one of the locals.

"The rising numbers of children with cancer is denied by Chevron. Many children have died from strange diseases according to the people, only since the oil drilling began.

"'It feels like my head is splitting apart,' said one Indian Palast interviewed.

"At the battlefield, the locals put on war paint and, heavily supported by lawyers, filed their lawsuit."

(Watch BBC Television Newsnight 'Rumble in the Jungle Part I' on this page, left, to see rare footage of Greg Palast interviewing Amazonians suffering from Big Energy deliberately poisoning them, "Standard Operating Procedure" in oil drilling business.)

Falsifying documents, 'science experts' faking tests

On Dec. 29, Yahoo News reported, "Even though it lost the historic $18 billion trial in Ecuador, Chevron continues to defraud Ecuador's appellate courts by refusing to disclose that it altered a key document to induce two U.S. academic "experts" to endorse fake testing methods to hide the presence of massive quantities of cancer-causing toxins at the company's former well sites in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, according to new documents released under federal court order.

Hinton had said then, "This is smoking gun evidence that Chevron duped two U.S. professors as part of a failed plan to hide the presence of massive amounts of life-threatening toxic contamination from the courts of Ecuador."

The U.S. professors Chevron hired to defraud the Ecuador court are Dr. Pedro J. Alvarez, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, and Dr. Douglas Mackay, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Davis.

Despite the oil giant's scheme to hide contamination, in February, an Ecuador court found Chevron liable for dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest based on evidence from the plaintiffs, third-parties, and even Chevron itself, that "bungled its own plan early in the trial by submitting soil and water samples that showed illegal levels of contamination at the company's well sites," according to Yahoo News.

The smoking gun documents were ordered released by a U.S. federal court in Colorado as part of a discovery action against a separate Chevron technical expert.

In parallel to criminal allegations against BP and the ongoing Gulf Of Mexico catastrophe, the Chevron smoking gun documents suggest that "Chevron's legal team concocted a plan to guarantee the company would find only 'clean' soil samples from dozens of contaminated well sites inspected by the court while 'dirty' samples would be sent to a secret laboratory where they would not be disclosed.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Galo Chiriboga, Ecuador's national prosecutor Galo Chiriboga had been called on to open a joint criminal investigation to determine facts related to the fraudulent scheme, "given that the planning took place in the United States while the execution took place on the ground in Ecuador."

Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer, has said, "Chevron committed a double fraud that was planned and executed in two countries.

"First, it defrauded Ecuador's courts by hiding horrific levels of contamination that it knew existed. It then defrauded American professors by giving them a fake document so they would unwittingly endorse the original fraud.

"The silence of Chevron and the two professors in the face of these profoundly disturbing facts is deafening."

Last year, former judge Juan Nuñez was exposed in videotapes of him discussing the case with businessmen including a former Chevron employee.

Subpoenaed outtakes from the documentary, Crude that supported the plaintiffs’ case showed advisers such as US-based lawyer Steven Donziger discussing corruption in Ecuador and how the legal team could seek to control or pressure the court.

Regarding Ecuadorian's victory being a victory for all humans, John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," stated, "We must stop the spread of predatory capitalism. We must all reject the social and environmental costs that this mutant virus spreads.

Perkins asserted that "you and I must continue to pressure Chevron and other oil companies.

"We must not purchase their gas. We must battle against toxic dumping everywhere.

"The defining goal of the corporatocracy – that the only responsibility of business is to make short-term profits – must be replaced by recognition that corporations have to serve the public interest."

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