Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Richard Cabrera Files Fraudulent Report: Chevron Claim

The "Richard Cabrera Report" is the basis for the much-used number "$16 billion" as the cost of Ecuador's lawsuit against Chevron. Now, Chevron representatives hammered this claim for the following reasons:

1. Cabrera manipulated and altered findings to justify false conclusions, including backdating photos;

2. He presented no evidence of pollution by Texaco Petroleum, erroneously assigning $1.4 billion in remediation costs to pits he did not visit and do not exist;

3. He presented no evidence to support cancer claims - neither identifying a single individual nor including a single medical report;

4. He did not take a single drinking water sample to establish contamination, yet he assigned $428 million in damages to be paid to improve Ecuador's potable water system;

5. Plaintiffs helped Cabrera compile the report, accompanying and assisting him on field trips, influencing the content of his report by providing him methodological tools such as questionable surveys and pre-written reports to use as report exhibits;

Item number 5 is key, because it's another example of how the government of Ecuador has been assisting the lawsuit against Chevron. Finding evidence to support this claim has been hard but this is one more item.

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