"They created thousands of open-air, unlined toxic waste pits where they dumped the heavy metals and toxins that came up from the ground when they drilled. They ran pipes from the pits into rivers and streams that local people relied on for their drinking water, their fishing, and their sustenance."
Chevron/Texaco discharged 30 times the amount of oil spilt in the Exxon Valdez disaster. The health effects on the indigenous population include increased cancer and mortality rates, skin rashes, pregnancy complications, and malnutrition from destruction of farmland.
In 1993 Steven Donziger, working with Ecuadorean lawyers on behalf of 30,000 plaintiffs harmed by Texaco, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company in New York federal court. After purchasing Texaco, Chevron argued successfully in 2001 that the case should be moved to Ecuador. According to New York University Law Professor Burt Neuborne, Chevron swore that Ecuador's courts "were fully capable of resolving this dispute justly."
In 2012 the Supreme Court in Ecuador affirmed lower courts' findings against Chevron and awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion in damages. Anticipating this verdict, Chevron sold its assets in Ecuador, fled the country and refused to pay the assessment. They had already hired a large and notorious international law firm, Gibson and Dunn, to pursue a strategy of demonizing Donziger. They got private investigators to track him, and created The Amazon Post an online booklet disparaging Donziger, replete with "evidence in video, images and audio of fraud against Chevron in Ecuador."
Chevron's net worth is $190 billion, nearly twice the $99 billion GDP of Ecuador in 2020. As a Chevron lobbyist explained to Newsweek back in 2008: "The ultimate issue here is Ecuador has mistreated a U.S. company. We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like thiscompanies that have made big investments around the world."
Last year, Dr. Nan M. Greer, an ecological anthropologist at the University of Redlands, prepared for the Israeli Knesset a report titled "Chevron's Global DestructionEcocide, Genocide, and Corruption." The occasion for her testimony was Chevron's bid to purchase Noble Energy's gas fields off the shore of Israel. She examined 70 cases in 31 countries, and summarized what she found:
"Chevron has used vast financial resources, political muscle, bribes, and retaliatory litigations to squash lawsuits and incident reports from communities and countries affected by their oil and gas extraction. Chevron appears to be among the most destructive oil companies in the world, destroying land and ocean ecosystems, poisoning rivers and streams, eliminating livelihoods, ravaging communities, and financing paramilitary violence, while filing frivolous and punitive litigations against anyone who dares to hold the company responsible for its crimes."
Following its usual strategy, on Feb.1, 2011 Chevron filed a racketeering lawsuit against Donziger and two Ecuadorean plaintiffs in US federal court, using the civil court component of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. The judge appointed to the case was Lewis Kaplan, a former tobacco company lawyer who, according to financial disclosure documents filed by the judge, had investments in Chevron. Kaplan was asked to recuse himself for bias, but he refused. Furthermore, as Jack Holmes explains in Esquire, Chevron "dropped their demands [against Donziger] for financial damages because it would have necessitated a jury trial." That let a biased Kaplan be "Donziger's judge-and-jury in the RICO case."
Based on the testimony of Alberto Guerra, a retired Ecuadorian judge relocated to the U.S. at great expense by Chevron, Judge Kaplan concluded in 2016 that the judgments of the Ecuadorian courts were based on bribery and fraud. Guerra later admitted that he was lying, but Kaplan hasn't changed his mind. In his judgment, he acknowledged that "Guerra on many occasions has acted deceitfully and broken the law ["] but that does not necessarily mean that it should be disregarded wholesale." Kaplan also ruled that since the Ecuadorian verdict against Chevron was obtained by corrupt means, plaintiffs could not collect the $9.5 billion in damages from Chevron. That decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017.
In 2018 Kaplan filed a complaint against Donziger with the New York Bar Grievance Committee, which then suspended his law license without a hearing. However, a Bar referee and former federal prosecutor called for a hearing and recommended reinstatement of Donziger's license, describing the process against Donziger as "extravagant, and at this point so unnecessary and punitive." The suspension is still on appeal.
In 2019 Kaplan ordered Donziger to "surrender his computer, cell phone, and passwords to be searched on behalf of Chevron." Because this would be a gross violation of attorney-client privilege, Donziger refused. For this refusal, Kaplan charged Donziger with criminal contempt. When the N.Y. prosecutor's office refused to accept the contempt case, Kaplan actually hired a private law firm to prosecute on behalf of the government. The firm, Seward & Kissel, had worked for Chevron as recently as 2018. Kaplan also hand-picked a judge, Loretta Preska, to preside over the contempt trial. Preska serves on the advisory board of the right-wing Federalist Society which receives massive donations from Chevron.
Kaplan's prosecution team placed Donziger under home confinement for the duration of the contempt trial. He has now worn an ankle-monitor 24 hours a day for two years. On Oct. 1, 2021, Judge Preska sentenced Donziger to 6 months in prison for misdemeanor criminal contempt, disregarding the two years he had already spent in home confinement. Donziger had appealed in court for leniency:
"He [Judge Kaplan] has ordered me to pay millions to Chevron to cover their legal fees in attacking me, and then he let Chevron go into my bank accounts and take all my life's savings because I did not have the funds to cover these costs. Chevron still has a pending motion to order me to pay them an additional $32 [million] in legal fees. That's where things stand today. I ask you humbly: Might that be enough punishment already for a Class B misdemeanor?"
But Judge Preska was unmoved: "Mr. Donziger has spent the last seven years thumbing his nose at the U.S. judicial system. Now it's time to pay the piper." Preska ignored a detailed ruling by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights denouncing the prosecution of Donziger as a violation of international law: "Taking into account all the circumstances of the case, the appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Steven Donziger immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law."
Even before the UN rebuke, Chevron's abusive prosecution of Donziger had drawn condemnation here and abroad. On April 27, Attorney General Merrick Garland received a letter from six House members: James P. McGovern, Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Jamal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamie Raskin. They asked for "serious and expedited consideration of our request," noting that
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