Ecuador In Bed With Chevron Accuser Donziger: U.S. Judge Lewis Kaplan

Judge Lewis Kaplan

Revealing what this blogger has charged for a year, the government of the country of Ecuador was identified as a party to the fraudulent lawsuit brought against American oil giant Chevron by lawyer Steven Donziger and the so-called "indigenous people" of the Ecuadorian Amazon River Delta.

In a 32-page document, Lewis Kaplan, U.S. District Judge, Southern District of New York, wrote that the The Republic of Ecuador's motion to intervene to block the transfer of documents relevant in the deposition of Donziger by Chevron lawyers was denied.

In the pages of the Judge's decision, Judge Kaplan reveals that Donziger failed to even note that the so-called "indigenous people" who are the Lago Agrio plaintiffs were either the focus of any one of the 8,652 documents in question, or that any one - one - of those items was written by the Lago Agrio plaintiffs.

Not one.

The Republic of Ecuador then claimed that it has an interest in those same documents, revealing itself, clumsily, to be a party to the same lawsuit that Amazon Watch tried to bully SFGate.com into having this blogger claim Ecuador was not a party to, last year.

That's right.

In an email on September 17, 2009, Amazon Watch tried to get SFGate.com to make me say this:

"The government of Ecuador is not the architect of the Chevron lawsuit, is not a party to the lawsuit, and will not be the recipient of any judgment paid by Chevron. This is a civil suit by private citizens."

I stood my ground and said that I would write a reason why Ecuador was party to the lawsuit against Chevron. Here's what I wrote, thanks to Bob McCarty:

Amazon Watch is wrong! In my previous blog post, I issued the argument proving that the Government of Ecuador was so involved in the "Aguinda v. Chevron Texaco" lawsuit that even though the were not officially a listed party, they could be named a party in court if the challenge to their status was presented.


Now, investigative blogger Bob McCarty has revealed that Ecuador is indeed a party to the case. Remember that Amazon Watch asserted...


"The government of Ecuador is not the architect of the Chevron lawsuit, is not a party to the lawsuit, and will not be the recipient of any judgment paid by Chevron. This is a civil suit by private citizens."


Yeah. Right.


According to McCarty's blog post , Washington Pesantez, Ecuador's Prosecutor General, said 90 percent of the $27 billion award would go to Ecuador if the court case was resolved against Chevron for that amount.

That silenced Amazon Watch.  Now, the organization that rails about this blogger's credibility has egg on its face.  Judge Kaplan has officially outed Ecuador as being involved in the lawsuit.   Indeed, between Ecuador claiming it would take 90 percent of any environmental damage award from an Ecuadorian court, Donziger talking of using threats of violence and intimidation against Ecuadorian judges, and Donziger claiming that he, indeed, would make billions from the case, and Donziger working with the State of Ecuador's oil company that took over Chevron's oil well, it's clear that the last people anyone really thought of was Ecuador's poor.

Indeed, Chevron has been out of Ecuador for so long,  18 years, that the real story of oil spills and environmental damage by Petroecuador and other non-American oil companies has not been effectively told.

Stay tuned.