>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.
>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.
Your article strips everything of context and attempts to make it seem like something nefarious is going on. But the article never suggests any sort of link between Gitter and Chevron, other than payment of fees the court ordered Chevron to pay. It's Glenn Beck level "connect the dots" rhetoric.
Gitter was appointed as a special master for the trial, after having agreed to do a bunch of work, such as mediation, for free. Appointment of a paid special master is a common practice in the Anglo legal system for cases where the Court needs a neutral third party to manage day-to-day issues in a complex matter. The special master is therefore often a lawyer that the judge trusts. (Maybe the practice of appointing special masters could be made more meritocratic, but nothing suggests either the special master or the judge had any prior connection to Chevron.) The special masters fees are paid by the parties.[1] Indeed, contrary to the article's spin, ordering only one side to pay the special master's fees is usually punishment to that party for having done something wrong.[1a] So of course Chevron paid Gitter. That is standard practice. The plaintiffs were also supposed to pay Gitter. But they refused.
The whole thing about the plaintiffs being impoverished farmers who couldn’t afford the special master’s fees is again out of context. The plaintiffs had millions of dollars in funding from multiple investors for the payment of litigation costs.[2]
The point about not paying Gitter’s law firm to make it seem like there was something improper is again specious. Gitter is a retired partner at his firm, which means he has an association but is not a partner or employee. The special master engagement was his personal engagement, not the firm’s. The firm provided a separate bill for the associate who assisted Gitter. (It is a typical courtesy for firms to loan out associates to assist retired partners with their individual engagements.)[3]
Finally, the Second Circuit's opinion upholding the fee award makes clear that while Gitter initially left off descriptions of how he spent the billed time, the court ordered him to provide those descriptions and he did so: https://casetext.com/case/chevron-corp-v-donziger-29
> Chevron's bill of costs contained copies of the bills it had paid for the compensation and expenses of the special masters and their assistant. In the case of one of the two special masters, former Magistrate Judge Katz, the material included detailed, contemporaneous time records. In the case of the other, Max Gitter, Esq., it included invoices showing the hours worked and the billing rates but not time detail. Accordingly, by order dated November 9, 2017, the Court (1) required that Mr. Gitter and Cleary, Gottlieb provide Donziger and the Court with "time records (including any description of services the existing records contain) sufficient to show the services rendered that were . . . included in the bill of costs taxed by the Clerk," and (2) requested that the special masters make a recommendation with respect to the allocation of the special master costs as between the defendants and Chevron. Donziger then was given until December 4, 2017 to object to the reasonableness of the hours devoted to the services performed by any or all of the special masters or their assistant and until December 23, 2017 to object to the special masters recommendation.
[1a] From above. "A party whose unreasonable behavior has occasioned the need to appoint a master, on the other hand, may properly be charged all or a major portion of the master's fees."
[2] Opinion linked above. "Perhaps more fundamentally, Donziger's focus on his supposed personal circumstances should not blind one to the fact that the litigation with Chevron, including this case, has been financed by third-party funders."
The biggest take is that Mr. Gitter was with Chevron long before the trial, he took money from them before appointment.
I read more about the case, and this is by far not the only party very close to the Chevron being embedded into the process. They pretty much enveloped the guy from all sides with their lawyers.
Where does the article say "Mr. Gitter was with Chevron long before the trial, he took money from them before appointment?" Given the highly misleading nature of the article you just linked, I would be very skeptical of trusting similar sources. There is a lot of "journalism" on this topic that takes tremendous liberties, relying on the fact that (1) most people don't understand how court proceedings or the law work; and (2) it's easy to hate Chevron.
For example, your article asserts that the RICO judgment against Donzinger has been "discredited." But a tribunal at the Hague, and also courts in Brazil, have found that the Ecuador judgment was procured by fraud. The article asserts that "Kaplan’s findings have been rejected in whole or in part in five different unanimous decisions by appellate courts in Canada and Ecuador, including the entire Supreme Courts of both countries." But when you actually look into it, the article seems to be relying on an early jurisdictional ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court that allowed an enforcement action to go forward: https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/the-plot-to-murde.... But the Canadian Supreme Court ultimately rejected enforcement of the Ecuadoran judgment in Canada: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkrauss/2019/04/05/the-su....
The article you linked came out before the Canadian decision, so I can't fault it for not taking that into account. However, what's deeply misleading was suggesting that the 2015 Canadian decision "discredited" the U.S. RICO judgment. The Canadian courts did not grapple with whether the Ecuadorean judgment was procured by fraud. They were dealing with the very different issue of whether the judgment -- even if it was legitimate -- could be enforced against Chevron's Canadian entity, which is an entirely different company. It was misleading to suggest that the Canadian decision allowing the enforcement proceeding to go forward somehow "discredited" the U.S. RICO judgment.
> 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.
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.
This isn't about scale, it's about location. Ecuador is a LOT more powerful than you are, but assuming you are not currently in Ecuador and don't have any bank accounts in Ecuador, how do you think they could seize any of your assets, if they had a mind to? Their options start (and very nearly end) at "sending you a polite request".
The backstory here is, Chevron used to have a lot of assets in Ecuador as part of a joint venture with the Ecuador state oil company. The joint venture wound up, Chevron left, and now there's some dispute over whether any remaining clean-up is properly the responsibility of Chevron or Ecuador. But this is being discussed after they closed everything down, sold up, and left.
All that's left if for Ecuador to go try and convince the legal system of other countries (where Chevron does have assets) to do something. And so far, that's not working very well for them.
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.
Most corporations these days feel no different from tobacco companies talking about caring about consumer health.
So you're proposing the Ecuadorian government should've given a whole lot of money to Chevron to be able to have a say in the matter?
At this point I would be fine with them sending in their army and raiding the place. If some of the higher-ups get collateral-damaged during the raid that wouldn't be a huge loss to the world.
I'm suggesting that if you already have ownership rights in Chevron, you should tell them to stop polluting the Amazon. Which you probably do if you're invested in any S&P500 index fund, for example, even if you're not invested directly.
Incidentally, the Government of Ecuador did buy a 25% share in the Texaco Lake Agrio oil field, via Petroecuador. And they also did raid offices at various points of the longstanding lawsuit iirc.
Because that's literally what buying shares is?[0]: Giving money to the corporation so they can finance future endeavours. Yes, you may not buy shares from them directly but from some other gambler. Still, to be able to sell you shares they need to have given it to Chevron first.
[0] Please correct me if I'm unknowingly bullshitting here!
You'd be giving money to the company if the shares actually came from them. If you're buying on an exchange ... you're exchanging cash for shares with the counterparty almost never ever the company itself. The company is not acting as a market maker on its own stock, for example. The only way the company would benefit is if the purchase increased the ask price so that at the end of the day the price per share was higher.
If I had shares, sure. But if I have disdain for the company, why would I want to own their shares? Hence, you have self-selecting shareholders who don't care.
Norway actually does this and it's fairly effective.
The ever so slight downside to this is that, while Norway's state investment fund is vastly wealthy shareholder of many companies that can throw its weight around, I am, regrettably, not.
One solution for this is for you to give me money.
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.
And likely the judge punishing him received a lot of compensation from shady sources.
This shows that there is a huge difference between being right and being found right by an American court.
Probably the only chance that this lawyer has left for his life is if someone rich and powerful - who by sheer luck is unconnected to the petrol industry - takes pity on him. He'll need millions to clean up this mess and that price doesn't change no matter the facts. He could be a Saint for what it's worth and he'll still need to pay up to receive the justice that he is owed.
No. Donziger won a lawsuit in Ecuador. There is some evidence that the win was the result, in part, of bribery and fraud, but that's a matter for the Ecuadorian courts, and they're apparently fine with it. So he's not in trouble for that.
However, he later started suing in various foreign courts for enforcement of that judgement, and lawsuits filed in the US are the business of US courts, and lawsuits to enforce judgements obtained via fraud, collusion, and bribery are tained. So if Donziger knew the judgement was obtained corruptly (and there's some very inconvenient footage of Donziger admitting as much to a documentary film crew...), then he's been a very naughty boy, and it's well within the right of a court to request he provide more information about what exactly he did. And the way courts enforce compliance with these requests is, yes, fines and imprisonment.
There's nothing all that weird about this. It's unfortunate because the people Donziger represented are very sympathetic, and have clearly been deeply wronged. Nonetheless, you're really not supposed lie and cheat to obtain justice for your clients.
This sounds crazy because the article is narrative pieced together by taking facts from a decade-long highly complex legal case completely out of context.
After Donzinger procured the Ecuadorean judgment, Chevron filed a RICO case against him in New York: http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecua.... (Start at page 298.) Chevron sought an injunction preventing the plaintiffs from enforcing the judgment in the U.S. (i.e. starting a court proceeding in the U.S. to seize U.S. assets to pay the Ecuadorean judgment). The New York court had jurisdiction because what it was being asked to do was prevent execution of the judgment in the U.S.
I have a hard time believing that they suspended him without a hearing, describing him as an "immediate threat to public order" but they fucking did it anyway.
They didn't give him a hearing because he wasn't entitled to relitigate the issue of his conduct. A principle called collateral estoppel holds that if you lose on an issue in one case, you're not entitled to relitigate that same issue in a subsequent case (so long as the standards of proof are similar between the two cases). The New York Court of Appeals wasn't entitled to decide that Donzinger hadn't committed fraud. It had to accept as true the factual findings of the Southern District, which was affirmed by the Second Circuit. The only issue before the New York court in the disciplinary case was whether, taking as true that Donzinger tried to bribe a judge, etc., whether he should be suspended. That did not require a hearing: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2018/2018_05...
> Further, respondent was afforded a full and fair opportunity to litigate, as evinced by the voluminous record on which Judge Kaplan's findings were based. Judge Kaplan conducted a seven-week trial, heard 31 live witnesses (including respondent), and considered sworn testimony of three dozen others, as well as thousands of documents. Respondent appealed Judge Kaplan's decision, yet chose not to challenge the underlying factual findings. Thus, his argument that he was denied meaningful appellate review fails.
> Because Judge Kaplan's findings constitute uncontroverted evidence of serious professional misconduct which immediately threatens the public interest, respondent should be immediately suspended, pursuant to 22 NYCRR 1240.9 (a) (5) (see e.g. Matter of Truong, 2 AD3d 27 [1st Dept 2003]).
>The only issue before the New York court in the disciplinary case was whether, taking as true that Donzinger tried to bribe a judge, etc., whether he should be suspended. That did not require a hearing
And it also relied upon the testimony of Alberto Guerra, who later admitted that he was lying and was paid by Chevron to lie:
Crossing into flamewar like that is not ok here. Worse, it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's against the HN guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. We have to, because it destroys the site for the things it's supposed to be for, like curious conversation.
Charges were for violating US law. Chevron claimed that he paid off Equatorian judges, manufactured evidence etc.
>>The decision hinged on the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge named Alberto Guerra, who claimed that Donziger had bribed him during the original trial and that the decision against Chevron had been ghostwritten.
A lot of stuff happens in such places, but when you take on Chevron size companies, you better be squeaky clean. Hundreds of lawyers and PIs will find everything. Chevron can't bribe, but local lawyers and PIs no doubt can.
Chevron can't "bribe" the judge... They can just pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars and get him US residency while taking extreme care in prepping his testimony (which somehow still contained lies and inconsistencies after all that prep.)
Oh, I meant that Chevron pays local attorney $3.7 million for fees and $2 Million are taken by that lawyer to bribe the judge. Chevron hears and sees no evil, they just pay their bills in time.
Chevron proved bribery in the original case through the testimony of a judge, circumstantial evidence showing opportunities to bribe the judge, and substantial discussions by Donzinger's associates about how they wanted to pay a bribe and how easy it would be to do so. If a similar array of evidence were deployed to show Chevron bribing someone, I think most people would be convinced.
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: http://opiniojuris.org/2010/08/04/chevron%E2%80%99s-explosiv...
One thing I'm confused about is why he's charged with criminal contempt.
> 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.
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 dispute has been going on a long time. Recall, the backstory is that Chevron claimed that Donziger tried to shake them down with a corruptly obtained judgement. They won a judgement against Donziger, but Donziger claims he has no money, so he hasn't paid them. (I mean, fair is fair I guess; Chevron won't pay the judgement Donziger won against them, why should Donziger pay the one they won against him?)
In any case, the criminal contempt is more recent, and stems from Chevron claiming that Donziger has been receiving a lot of money, primarily by selling "shares" in the judgement, ie, a law firm in Canada (or whatever) pays Donziger for the right to sue Chevron in Canada to try and collect. Donziger claimed he had not done so, and the judge in the case ordered him not to start. Chevron claimed he was still doing it (and apparently submitted some evidence to back this up). The the judge ordered Donziger to turn over records to demonstrate how much money he had and, in particular, if he was getting money by monetizing the fraudulent judgement he had obtained against Chevron (which would be against the judge's order).
Donziger has refused to turn over these records, which prompted criminal contempt charges, which he has now been convicted of. He can try appealing, but I'm not entirely sure under what grounds; Donziger's financial records would seem to be fair game (and it's pretty common for a court to ask for such records when someone is failing to pay a judgement against them), so...
> In March 2014, a United States district court judge ruled that the Ecuadorian plaintiff's lead US attorney, Steven Donziger, had used "corrupt means," including payment of almost US$300,000 in bribes, to obtain the 2011 court verdict in Ecuador. The judge did not rule on the underlying issue of environmental damages. While the US ruling does not affect the decision of the court in Ecuador, it has blocked efforts to collect damages from Chevron in US courts.[55][56] Donziger and the two Ecuadorian defendants appealed, and on August 8, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the district court's judgment against them in all respects.
When he turned over the documents, it revealed "that the 2009 environmental report signed by a court-appointed expert had largely been written by an environmental consultancy company hired by the plaintiffs."
I believe you are conflating appeals. The criminal contempt of court is from August 2019, the appeal you cite is from 2016. That wiki article seems to have major quality and sourcing concerns and is not something that I would trust.
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: http://www.theamazonpost.com/wp-content/uploads/Chevron-Ecua...
> 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.
> 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.
> "Skip the narrative and go straight to".. the opinion of a single judge whom evidence suggests is biased in favor of Chevron.
There is zero evidence suggesting he is "biased in favor of Chevron." Donzinger's self-serving assertions are not evidence. Donzinger has repeatedly petitioned the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the appellate court that oversees the trial court here, to have the judge recused. The Second Circuit has repeatedly rejected those requests. And the Second Circuit, through a panel of three judges, affirmed the order I linked to: https://fcpablog.com/2016/08/11/second-circuit-upholds-rico-...
>"Kaplan has a soft spot for Chevron, which the judge once described as “a company of considerable importance to our economy that employs thousands all over the world, that supplies a group of commodities, gasoline, heating oil, other fuels, and lubricants on which every one of us depends every single day.”
Chevron is not the only producer of petroleum products in the world and not every person in the world relies on Chevron's products every single day. It's absurd to call that statement factual.
As a simple matter of grammar, that's not what he's saying. He says that Chevron is a manufacturer of a "group of commodities" that "on which every one of us depends every single day." The sentence means that people rely on the group of commodities, of which Chevron is one producer.
A bit of a biased source don't you think? The website was created by chevron to serve as chevron propaganda, it would not surprise me to find tons of articles defending their point of view, they don't even try to hide it, the headline of the home is "Chevron's Views
And Opinions On
The Ecuador Lawsuit".
> Chevron has hired private investigators to track Donziger, created a publication[1] to smear him, and put together a legal team of hundreds of lawyers from 60 firms, who have successfully pursued an extraordinary campaign against him.
[1] this is a link to the Amazonpost.com.
So,is it really set up and run by Chevron for the purpose of discrediting?
Agreed. The suggested source, http://theamazonpost.com, is like something out of a nightmare. Really puts into perspective the angle provided by The Intercept.
(Yes the link goes to a court opinion, just remarking on the host itself.)
Note that the intercept article links to theamazonpost as an example of stuf Chevron did to discredit the lawyer - that is setting up the site/publication (see my sibling comment).
Good point, it probably is. However, they only mention it to attack Guerra's credibility (and indirectly, Chevron), but surely it is relevant that the arbitration found for Chevron?
I have to conclude that the article is telling only one side of the story. That's OK I guess, but people need to stay aware of it and refrain from forming an opinion without more information.
to receive US aid you have to essentially give carte blanche to US corporations to raid and rape your country and its people as they please.
EDIT: essentially the hague court is enforcing the heinous practice of forcing the prioritization of corporate profits over country's sovereignty, and the wellbeing of its citizenry and envrionment
You can't have your cake and eat it to, even if you're a developing country. Companies don't invest in places like Ecuador because they worry they'll be shaken down if they do. In order to get companies like Chevron to invest in their country, countries like Ecuador consent to these international arbitration agreements. If they don't like the terms, they should stop doing that.
It seems like you are confusing some things. The Hague is enforcing international law - which is its purpose. The treaties were entered into by fully competent governments. These aren't uneducated minors being pressured into a deal they don't understand. They're national governments.
you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them
> you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them
I'm not aware of any provisions in these treaties that permit killing.
"An estimated 18 billion gallons of produced water has been diverted into some 880 unlined open pits, causing severe contamination of streams and rivers relied on by local inhabitants for their drinking water, bathing and fishing. Moreover, 650,000 barrels of crude oil have been spilled directly in the jungles and pathways.[14][15][19] The produced water contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at levels many times higher than permitted in the US, where produced water was typically re-injected underground since at least the 1970s.[14] Given the magnitude of the contamination and its lasting impact many environmentalists claim it is the worst oil-related disaster in the world, the amount of crude and toxic waste dumped by Texaco allegedly being 30 times the one spilled in the Exxon Valdez oil spill."
governments are not allowed to do anything that lowers corporate profits under these treaties. in this specific case the pollution was deadly and yet the treaty protects chevron's interest over those of the citizens and endangers lives
Well, the national government representing these citizens intentionally chose that attracting investment (which presumably helps their citizens in the long run) is more important to their country than protecting the health of their population, and as the sovereign, they can make that choice on behalf of their citizens. It may be a stupid or misguided or evil choice, but that's their choice to make.
Also, for many third world countries it does seem quite clear that simply setting the labor law and environmental law protections equal to first world standards would be a stupid policy harmful to their citizens; simple poverty kills and harms much more people in a much more direct way, and becoming a place for outsourcing is a net benefit to their population in the end; proper protection is a luxury that their society can't (yet) afford because they have to fulfil their core needs first even if that costs some lives due to pollution or exploitative labor. At some point they'll want to toughen up these restrictions (as China is doing now), but it's not because the lax restrictions were wrong or a regrettable mistake, it's only because the conditions have changed, they're richer, and now they can afford to be more picky about these issues. It's a tough choice to make this balance well, but it's not something that someone else can decide for them, the national governments are the ones that should be making this choice - unless they're totalitarian dictatorships, in which case the people should be given the say, but they won't without a potentially bloody coup.
> These aren't uneducated minors being pressured into a deal they don't understand. They're national governments.
I think you are being rather naive about this. A country is not a person. Individuals can be in charge with entirely different agenda's than what is the interest of the country. Corruptible officials who let themselves get bought by powerful corporations to gain personal wealth. Not for the benefit of their own country.
When the citizens realize they have been screwed over by a corrupt leader, who gained power in illegal or dubious means, should they have no recourse?
History is full of stories about these kinds of unequal deals. It is how colonialism started. Powerful western enterprises pressured weaker nations into unfavorable conditions.
It happens everywhere. As a Norwegian I know very well how powerful American oil companies tried to screw us over big time when found oil in the North Sea. What saved Norway was in fact that we had an extremely anti-capitalist government full of socialists which challenged them on everything. We also benefitted from having low levels of corruption. There was no government official these companies could buy to screw us over. That is the problem of corruption. It makes you very vulnerable.
This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything.
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.
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?
> This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything.
Not true. We do know stuff. On one side, you have a decision of the Ecuadorean courts upholding the judgment. On the other side, you have decisions from the U.S. and the Netherlands saying that the judgment was procured by fraud. And you have decisions from Canada, Argentina, and Brazil that do not get into the fraud, but nonetheless declining to enforce the judgment.
All I know is what intermediaries (whom I've never met) say. The Ecuadorian judge says the American judge is lying, the American judge says the Ecuadorian judge is lying. I personally haven't looked at any evidence. And if I did, how could I personally know if it's valid?
You're caught-up and emotional in this one tiny thread which is insignificant. We should be talking about the larger problem.
Stuff like this is the reason when the west cries about China silk road initiative most of the countries don't care as Western countries have been exploiting their resources for years what difference does it make if China does it.
Correction, it is not the west as a single entity. Big western nations have tried exploiting other smaller western nations.
In my native Norway I know several cases of this. When it became possible to utilize hydro-electric power, British businessmen would travel around the country and get farmers owning waterfalls drunk. Then they would get them to sign contracts handing over the waterfall to them.
Same deal when Norway found oil. American oil companies tried hard to screw us over. They put in a lot of pressure and played dirty games. Fortunately our leader at the time Einar Gerhardsen was high skeptical of big capital and a self proclaimed democratic socialist.
They bid their time instead of getting sucked into a one sided deal. In fact the system we managed to put in place to fight big multinationals trying to exploit our resources impressed the Chinese. So I believe Deng Xiaoping sent a delegation to Norway. China had in the past suffered from companies from great western powers owning everything in China. The Chinese wanted to learn from us how we had manage to let in foreign capital and expertise while keeping national control.
So some of the systems in China with joint ventures etc was inspired by systems setup in Norwegian oil industry to protect Norwegian interests. Any small nation western or otherwise is vulnerable to exploitation by large rich nations.
Today China itself is frequently twisting our arm.
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...
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]
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.”
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).
money rules society, and legality works for money; at the sime time, money as a system is encoded and enforced by the legal system.
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.
all these kind of weird comments I make as an attempt of being critical ofthen get downvoted. I don't understand why but the outcome is I make less of them and think twice before posting (I probably shouldn't post this, but meh, this is public self-introspection).
My take away is that I should somehow make them better but I don't understand why some get downvotes.
maybe I make big and unjustified logical jumps? maybe I'm to paranoid? in any case I think way too much...
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.
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.
Think about it from the lawyer's point of view. If the story is article is accurate then someone has a vendetta against him. Someone has already spent a lot of money on an Ecuadorian judge to fabricate evidence against him. Now they want his phone and computer. Who knows what they could 'find' on them.
Even if the truth is more murky than presented in this article. He may have needed to contact shady people as part of his work and this could clearly be used to smear him.
Of course, the article could be a gross misrepresentation of the truth but a quick google search reveals that the feud between Chevron and Donziger has been widely reported and lasted more than 20 years. The fact that he is unwilling to hand over his phone is just the latest salvo in a long battle.
If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this?
I mean we are not asked to believe anything crazy here. A company made enormous environmental damage. Is that premise hard to believe? Next they refused to pay or invent excuses? Again nothing odd about that.
Some lawyer takes up the case and wins. Again nothing out of the ordinary. The company fights him tooth and nail. Nothing weird thus far.
What is novel is really just the extent to which they have gone to smear him and destroy him. That they are motivated to do this is not strange at all.
If they honestly believe the guy created a fraudulent scheme to steal billions of dollars from them, no, it doesn’t seem particularly immoral to spend millions making sure he gets in trouble for it.
> If we are to believe the article, Chevron was on a vendetta against him, spending huge amounts of money to destroy him. Paying people to dig dirt. Surely you must see the immorality of this?
Absolutely nothing immoral about that. Having been wronged, Chevron is morally entitled to do absolutely anything short of illegality against this creep.
I've read a few more articles on the subject now. One side or the other is lying through their teeth but I've no idea which side. It's depressing how possible it is for someone to argue almost any point of view especially if they are shameless and willing to lie and it's so hard to prove anything.
In Forbes there is a contributer "Michael I. Krauss" who subscribes openly and fully to the view that Chevron is innocent, that any pollution is due to the Ecuadorian petrol company and that Donziger is a crook [1] who fixed the trial through bribery. This blog post (one day later) by Clyde Osborne also takes Chrevon's side [2]. Weirdly both articles use the similar phrase
"If I were a legal journalist, I would track down Mr. Donziger's legal ethics professor at Harvard. I would ask that professor what he or she thinks of his or her former student. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. Note to HLS's Associate Dean: I would be delighted to teach that seminar. It would be a great case study about how not to practice law."
and
"If I had been a felony journalist, I might track down Mr. Donziger’s felony ethics professor at Harvard. I would ask that professor what he or she thinks of his or her former pupil. Harvard might want to create a seminar about the Lago Agrio case. Note to HLS’s Associate Dean: I might be overjoyed to educate that seminar. It would be a tremendous case observe how now not to practice law."
That's a bit weird. Ironically today's article did speak to Charles Nesson, an attorney and Harvard Law School professor who takes Donziger's side and even "teaches Donziger's case in his “Fair Trial” course, using it as an example of a decidedly unfair trial." This other publication also seems to be more aligned with Donziger [3].
This is clearly a divisive issue with 9 billion dollars at stake for Chevron and millions at stake for Donziger (Chevron demanded a few years ago that he pay for all of their legal fees and he was fined for comtempt of court too) and so I'm not sure how much you could trust any reports unless you put a lot of time into studying this issue in depth. There's so much money swilling around and both sides have accused the other of running misleading publicity campaigns through to outright propaganda.
To me it still seems like a massively unequal fight though and demonstrates that a sufficiently funded corporation can crush most people legally if they wish to. Legal costs are simply too expensive for most individuals.
>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.
>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.
I think it's 100% clear cut what's going on here