Shocking New Revelations: Chevron's 'Dirty Tricks Guy' Says Company "Cooked" Evidence in Ecuador Trial

Chevron's 'Dirty Tricks Guy' in Ecuador, Diego Borja: "Crime Does Pay"

There are shocking new revelations about Chevron's attempts to corrupt the trial in Ecuador over the company's massive contamination of the Amazon rainforest.

In recorded conversations released today, longtime Chevron contractor Diego Borja threatened to reveal damaging evidence "cooked" by Chevron in the environmental trial in Ecuador unless he received enough money for turning over secret videotapes to high-ranking Chevron executives. The revelations are contained in a report authored by San Francisco Bay Area-based attorney and Private Investigator Grant Fine.

On the audiotapes, Borja said he has enough evidence to ensure a victory by the Amazon communities if Chevron failed to pay him what he was promised. Before turning over the videotapes to Chevron, Borja said he made sure Chevron "completely understood" he wanted payment for them.

At one point, Borja laughs and says, "Crime does pay."

Click here to read the press release and investigative report being released today by the Amazon Defense Coalition.

A whistle-blower named Santiago Escobar brought the tapes to plaintiffs' representatives in Quito. Escobar, a childhood friend of Borja, first heard Borja speaking about an "operation he was doing for Chevron" at a 'discoteca' in Quito in June 2009. Disgusted by what he heard, Escobar later taped conversations and kept records of online chats he had with Borja.

Santiago Escobar said:

"Diego always bragged to us about what he was doing with the testing samples to help Chevron avoid prosecution. Everyone knew he was Chevron's dirty tricks guy. Over time, I became more disgusted with what Diego was doing. The videotapes and his interest in switching sides was the last straw for me."

Borja says Chevron hired him to create four companies so his work for the oil company would appear “independent.” He suggests that the companies were connected to a laboratory to test contamination samples. Borja says the laboratory was not independent, but rather “belonged” to Chevron.

The investigative report also revealed that Borja’s wife, Sara Portilla, worked for Chevron for four years and represented Severn Trent Labs (STL), a U.S. laboratory that Chevron described as an “independent” lab where it had its contamination samples tested. Court documents obtained by Grant Fine cite Borja and Portilla as representatives of STL. They both signed 'chain of custody' documents with the Lago Agrio court that showed how the samples moved from the contamination site to the testing lab.

Chevron has kept its longtime contractor, Diego Borja, and his family hidden away at this $6,000-a-month house located just a few minutes from Chevron's corporate headquarters in San Ramon, California.

According to Escobar, Borja told him he was taking instructions from his bosses at Chevron's Miami-based offices. The oil company has been hiding Borja in a $6000/month house with a swimming pool in a gated community near its headquarters, and is paying a high-profile San Francisco criminal defense attorney to represent him. While there's no way yet to prove it, Escobar even says that Borja told him that Chevron is paying him $100,000 a month!

Background:
In August 2009, Chevron launched another round of fireworks in its campaign to evade responsibility in Ecuador – this time in the form of secretly-taped videos they claimed exposed corruption implicating the judge presiding over the trial. But since that time, the supposed scandal has unraveled with revelations about the secret video-taping of the judge, and the relationship between Chevron and the two men who made the videos – one a convicted felon, and the other a long-time Chevron contractor directly involved with the company's legal defense.

The investigation into American Wayne Hansen – who posed as the owner of a remediation company willing to pay bribes for clean-up contracts – revealed that he has never worked in remediation, and is a convicted felon and drug trafficker with no visible means of financial support. Chevron paid for an attorney for Hansen but Hansen has since fired the attorney, and his current whereabouts are unknown.

– Han

Han Shan is the coordinator of Amazon Watch's Clean Up Ecuador Campaign

Profile: Angel, Father of Six Who Died of Cancer from Chevron's Contamination

The Chevron Pit blog has posted the latest installment in a series of stories about how Chevron's contamination in Ecuador's rainforest region has impacted the people living near the former oil sites. The photos and testimonials are from the book 'Crude Reflections' by photographers Lou Dematteis and Kayana Szymczak.

This latest story is about Luz Maria Martin and her late husband Angel Toala. They lived – and Luz and their family continues to live – in the Shushufindi area of the Ecuadorian Amazon, near an oil pumping station and only 200 yards from an oil well. Shushufindi is the name of a small town in the northeast of Ecuador, as well as the name of the largest oil field in Ecuador's Oriente Basin, discovered by Chevron-owned Texaco in 1970.

Luz and Angel moved with their six children to the Shushufindi area for work. But Angel developed stomach cancer, and by the time it was diagnosed, it was too late. Photographer Lou Dematteis and journalist Joan Kruckewitt conducted the interview with his widow Luz.

An excerpt from the interview:

I don’t think the oil company (Texaco) worried if they contaminated the water. We farmers didn't realize the water was contaminated, and certainly it was not in the oil company’s interest to tell us that.

Angel Toala at his home in Shushufindi shortly before succumbing to stomach cancer. Photo by Lou Dematteis.

Transcription of interview with Luz Maria Martin, widow of Angel Toala, who died of stomach cancer:

My husband, Angel Toala, and I came here to the Amazon 23 years ago from the mountains of San Domingo. We came because he was told you could earn good money with the [oil] companies here. We have six children.

Angel worked on the pipeline for Texaco for five years, and that’s how we’ve been able to buy this farm. Mostly we grew coffee, plantains, yucca, some cacao.

There’s a [Texaco] pumping station near our house and a [Texaco] oil well 200 yards from our house, and downstream is a lake where the crude oil they dumped gathers. We never let the animals drink the water. A lot of times we found dead fish in it. Our coffee plants there turned yellow and died.

We got our drinking water from the rain, and, when it didn’t rain, from the stream. It had a funny taste and sometimes you could see oil floating on top. We bathed there and washed our clothes there. We knew the water was bad for our health, but what could we do? There wasn’t water anywhere else.

About three years ago, my husband started having stomach pains, slight pains when he ate. He couldn’t eat as much as he used to. (Crying) Certain foods made him feel bad, and he couldn’t eat meat, or fish. About a year ago he started losing weight.

(Crying) Then his back began hurting, and his muscles. He felt tired. At the end, he couldn’t take the sun. He was so tired; he didn’t have any energy.

In Quito he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. We took him to the Eugenio Espejo Hospital but the doctors said that it was too late; nothing could be done.

(Crying) The last three months before he died, he couldn’t do anything. He just lay in the hammock.

Angel Toala at home in Shushufindi. Photo by Lou Dematteis from Crude Reflections.

Judge Allows Arbitration in Chevron-Ecuador Battle – Environmental Lawsuit Not Directly Affected

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Leonard Sand declined to stay international arbitration sought by Chevron in complaints against the Republic of Ecuador. After repeatedly asserting that there need be only one claim that is arbitrable in Chevron's complaint, Judge Sand dismissed Ecuador's motion to stay the arbitration under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty. Sadly, Judge Sand's ruling may mean more delay in getting relief for the 30,000 people in Ecuador affected by Chevron's massive contamination of their rainforest home, but this was a battle between the oil giant and Ecuador, and does not directly affect the lawsuit originally brought by Ecuador's indigenous people to force Chevron to clean up its toxic mess.

For years in the 1990s, Chevron argued in the same court to have the environmental lawsuit – originally filed in 1993 in New York against Chevron-owned Texaco – sent to Ecuador. Chevron made repeated commitments to the District Court to be subject to jurisdiction in Ecuadorian courts, and satisfy any judgment in the case, reserving its rights to challenge the verdict only in a very clearly-defined way – under what the judge and lawyers in the courtroom this week referred to as "CPLR 5304." Section 5304 of the New York State Civil Practice Law and Rules (CPLR) sets forth grounds for challenging a "foreign judgment," if an entity believes it did not receive due process of law, for instance. Breaching the commitments it repeatedly made to the District Court – and mandated by the Circuit Court of Appeals – Chevron is "jumping the gun," according to one of the lawyers for Ecuador, and in the final stages of the 17-year lawsuit, trying to find another way to evade responsibility for its environmental devastation of Ecuador's rainforest region.

After the decision, Steven Donziger, a U.S. lawyer for the plaintiffs, said:

"We have explained to the court why we believe Chevron is trying to undermine the rule of law in both the U.S. and Ecuador by taking the litigation over the world's worst oil-related disaster to a secret arbitration where the victims of the company's misconduct cannot appear. This end-run maneuver is just the latest chapter in a long pattern of abuse by Chevron when it comes to the indigenous people of Ecuador. At the end of the day, a public court will decide the claims of the victims and if they receive a favorable judgment against Chevron we expect to enforce it in countries where the company has assets."

As the verdict in the trial is expected within months, Chevron is increasingly desperate to find any way to escape a huge liability in the case. Judge Sand, the same judge who declined Ecuador's motion to stay the international arbitration yesterday, ruled against Chevron's motion to take the case to arbitration in 2007. And while ruling for Chevron, Judge Sand opened on the first day of the hearing by asking Chevron why its previous representations and agreements with the court didn't preclude it from arbitration. Before issuing his ruling, the judge also said that he was skeptical of the timing of Chevron's move, likely coming just ahead of a verdict in the marathon 17-year court battle.

As the Associated Press reported:

"[Judge Sand's] ruling does not directly affect the lawsuit Chevron is fighting in Ecuador, where a court-appointed expert has recommended the oil company pay up to $27 billion for environmental damages and related illnesses."

In fact, the judge's decision has nothing to do with the merits of the case against Chevron and the staggering mountain of evidence that shows Chevron's unambiguous responsibility for massive oil contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This is just Chevron's latest legal maneuver to try to evade responsibility for the toxic legacy it left behind in Ecuador that continues to cause suffering, sickness, and death for men, women and children in the indigenous and campesino communities throughout Ecuador's rainforest region.

Today, the Republic of Ecuador's Attorney General Diego Garcia said that Ecuador is considering appealing the decision. And today, the frustrating results of the latest courtroom skirmish are likely trickling through the rainforest communities, like the rainbow-colored slicks of oil that still course their rivers and streams.

– Han

Han Shan is the Coordinator of the Clean Up Ecuador Campaign.

Chevron Faces Critical Hearing in Last-Ditch Effort to Escape Ecuador Trial

Today, oil giant Chevron will appear in federal court in New York to defend a last-ditch and likely futile effort to escape a trial in Ecuador. Chevron wants to take the case to binding arbitration under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, where the Amazon rainforest communities who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit would not be able to appear.

Today's hearing is before Judge Leonard B. Sand, who handed Chevron a defeat in 2007, permanently staying the company's first attempt at arbitration. Jonathon Abady, an American lawyer representing the rainforest communities in the federal court action, says, "Chevron acts like a fugitive from justice in Ecuador because the evidence establishing the company’s misconduct is overwhelming."

According to a press release from the Amazon Defense Coalition (ADC), which represents the 30,000 indigenous people and campesinos who are suing Chevron for clean-up of massive contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the oil giant is:

trying to abandon the trial even though over the last seven years the parties have produced more than 64,000 chemical sampling results, conducted 103 court-supervised inspections of former Chevron well sites scattered throughout the rainforest, and created a trial record than runs to more than 200,000 pages.

Read the rest of the ADC press release.

– Han

Han Shan is Coordinator of the Clean Up Ecuador Campaign

After Visit to CA: Personal Video Message from Emergildo Criollo to Chevron CEO John Watson

Readers of this blog may be somewhat familiar with Emergildo's story by now – an indigenous leader from the Cofan nation in Ecuador's Amazon, he first encountered Texaco's helicopters landing in his pristine rainforest home to drill for oil in 1964. About a decade later, his first two sons had died from sickness due to oil contamination and his wife has since suffered uterine cancer. He tells a tragic story of environmental devastation, cultural loss, and human suffering. But his story is also one of perseverance, courage and resilience as he continues to fight for clean up of Chevron/Texaco's contamination and bravely demands justice for his people and the thousands of others who have suffered from Chevron's callous neglect and greed.

Last week, Emergildo traveled to California, to pay a visit to Chevron CEO John Watson at his home, bearing a letter signed by himself, other indigenous nationalities in Ecuador, and the Amazon Defense Coalition, which represents the 30,000 plaintiffs in a monumental lawsuit demanding environmental clean-up from Chevron. Mr. Watson didn't answer the call so Emergildo headed to Chevron's headquarters in San Ramon and once again asked for Watson, only to be received by Chevron public relations executives, who accepted his letter as well as over 325,000 supporting petitions from more than 150 countries around the world.

After delivering his letter and the petitions, Emergildo recorded this personal video message to John Watson: