Chevron Ecuador - Amazon Watch is afraid to sue Ecuador

In the never-ending Chevron Ecuador legal battle, Laywer Steven Donziger (the head of a decade-long battle to extort billions from Chevron for environmental damage caused by the Ecuador-owned Petroecuador and Ecuador President Rafael Correa's policy of allowing oil production in the Amazon, while having kicked out American oil companies) and the Amazon Watch organization yesterday called for additional damages against Chevron in Ecuador, citing alleged sabotage of the court proceedings by Chevron.

That's a joke on several fronts. First, understand that this effort is nothing more than Steve Donziger's ticket to billions, as this space stated in this video:



It's sad, that Donziger is accusing Chevron of somehow tampering with the Ecuadorian court system when, in fact, it's Donziger and his collegues who have been trying to manipulate the already corrupt court system in Ecuador.

An old view with roots in Berkeley

Ecuador oil mess caused by Petroecuador

What's really bothersome about this goes back to something that has its roots for this blogger at the Department of City and Regional Planning at The University of California at Berkeley. It was there, at what we lovingly call "DCRP" (and to which I owe a donation), that some of my fellow students rubber-stamped the economic development actions of governments in third-world countries.

Not to get too much off the point, but government's stealing petrodollars that could help the poor, and the overuse of narcodollars to line political pockets was seldom a focus. It was the classic "big company bad", "third world country good" ethic. An idea that I totally hated because it's simplistic; in this business the lines of good and bad are not so clear.

The people you think are "good" are some of the first ones in the Ecuador case, to shoot an arrow into your back.  It's a known fact that Ecuador's poor in the Amazon are hostile to outsiders even from their own country.  It's also a known fact that Ecuador's politics and court system are as dirty as the oil it produces.

At the time I was there, some at DCRP presented a "small group think" that escaped a hard look at corruption and never really solved problems for countries like Ecuador. Now, Ecuador's government ia allowed to get away with ignoring its poor without criticism. Ask Amazon Watch why it doesn't sue Ecuador itself?  The answer is simple: because they're in partnership with each other.

Donziger's credibility is lacking

Earlier this year, evidence submitted by Donziger and his team in Ecuador was repudiated by Charles W. Calmbacher, the very expert that Donziger and the plaintiffs hired to make a report.

Calmbacher, under oath in a deposition you can download here, said the evidence submitted by Donziger and the Amazon Defense Coalition was fraudulent and was not written by him.

All of which leads to one conclusion considering Wednesday's news: Steven Donziger, Amazon Watch and the Amazon Defense Coalition, are trying to divert attention from their own court fixing attempts, imply that American Chevron has done something wrong in Ecuador, and collect billions that would go to the Ecuadorian government, and to Donziger, and not the people Donziger claims to represent.

Ecuador's own lawyer Washington Pesantez, who's title is Ecuador's Prosecutor General, has already said it would get 90 percent of the $27 billion or $16 billion or whatever number Donziger's managed to conjure up of late.

That, folks, makes Ecuador a party to Steven Donziger's own lawsuit and calls into question all this jazz about helping the indigenous people of Ecuador.  But even with the information presented, Donziger and Amazon Watch press on with their claims.

Time is not on their side. There's still the issue of evidence of involvement in the Chevron Ecuador case by President Correa's own political party.

The New York Times ran an article on the bribery scandal involving then Chevron Ecuador case Judge Nunez and recordings that point right to President Correa's sister Pierina Correa as being in line to be approached about the bribe. This is what the Times reported:

In the same meeting, Mr. García told Mr. Borja how to approach Ms. Correa, the president’s sister, about the bribe. "Tell Pierina clearly, 'Madam Pierina, what we came to do beyond anything else is to participate, participate in the remediation. That’s why I want to make you part of this.'"

Mr. Correa's party was to receive a million in the bribe effort.

Now, collect the dots here: we have Ecuador's own lawyer Washington Pesantez stating Ecuador will get 90 percent of the damage award, and we have allegations and evidence pointing to President Correa's own political party as getting some of that same damage award. This lawsuit is designed to do nothing more than make Steven Donziger rich and Ecuador's rich, richer, while Petroecuador continues to mess up its own country's environment.