> Even though the ruling was subsequently upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, Chevron immediately made clear that it would not be paying the judgment. Instead, Chevron moved its assets out of the country, making it impossible for the Ecuadorians to collect. WTF? A nation state couldn’t have seized the assets? It seems that multinational megacorps are truly more powerful than and above the law in small countries t…
>megacorps are truly more powerful than and above the law in small countries these days. Why in small countries? They do what they want in America too.
Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
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Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> pressured into a deal they don't understand you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them
> you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them I'm not aware of any provisions in these treaties that permit kill…
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> pressured into a deal they don't understand you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them
> you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them I'm not aware of any provisions in these treaties that permit kill…
"An estimated 18 billion gallons of produced water has been diverted into some 880 unlined open pits, causing severe contamination of streams and rivers relied on by local inhabitants for their drinking water, bathing and fishing. Moreover, 650,000 barrels of crude oil have been spilled directly in the jungles and pathways.[14][15][19] The produced water contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at levels many times higher than permitted in the US, where produced water was typically re-injected underground since at least the 1970s.[14] Given the magnitude of the contamination and its lasting impact many environmentalists claim it is the worst oil-related disaster in the world, the amount of crude and toxic waste dumped by Texaco allegedly being 30 times the one spilled in the Exxon Valdez oil spill."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lago_Agrio_oil_field#Pollution
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#34>The evidence demonstrates that Chevron sent the funds in 2013 to the account of Max Gitter, a court-appointed Special Master who at the time was working as Senior Counsel at the high-profile corporate law firm Cleary Gottlieb. Gitter is a personal friend and former law partner of Lewis A. Kaplan, the controversial federal judge who presided over the Chevron “racketeering” (or RICO) case and who repeatedly has been accused of bias in favor of the oil giant in its multiyear attempt to try to taint a $9.5 billion environmental judgment against it handed down by Ecuadorian courts.
>Gitter and an associate were secretly billing Chevron a total of $1,330 per hour for their work sitting in weeks of depositions leading up to the civil RICO trial, which began in October 2013. That amount is more than many of the indigenous peoples in Ecuador who won the judgment make in one year, said Patricio Salazar, the Ecuadorian lawyer for the Front for the Defense of the Amazon (FDA), the group that represents the affected communities.
I think it's 100% clear cut what's going on here
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#35This judge needs to be thoroughly investigated on his connections to Chevron.
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#36> Even though the ruling was subsequently upheld by the Ecuadorian Supreme Court, Chevron immediately made clear that it would not be paying the judgment. Instead, Chevron moved its assets out of the country, making it impossible for the Ecuadorians to collect. WTF? A nation state couldn’t have seized the assets? It seems that multinational megacorps are truly more powerful than and above the law in small countries t…
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#37I don't know who's right here, but it is suspicious that The Intercept's article doesn't even mention the judgement for Chevron from the The Hague's arbitration panel. https://www.chevron.com/-/media/chevron/stories/documents/in...
> In 2015, when Guerra testified in an international arbitration proceeding, he admitted that he had lied and changed his story multiple times
Is that not referring to the same international arbitration proceeding you mentioned?
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you would be surprised as to how many people would assume that they would still be able to hold a corporation to account if they completely make a country unlivable and kill citizens. these treaties are morally wrong and make it legal for corporations to destroy the habitibility of a piece of land and kill its inhabitants if it is profitable to them I'm not aware of any provisions in these treaties that permit kill…
governments are not allowed to do anything that lowers corporate profits under these treaties. in this specific case the pollution was deadly and yet the treaty protects chevron's interest over those of the citizens and endangers lives
Also, for many third world countries it does seem quite clear that simply setting the labor law and environmental law protections equal to first world standards would be a stupid policy harmful to their citizens; simple poverty kills and harms much more people in a much more direct way, and becoming a place for outsourcing is a net benefit to their population in the end; proper protection is a luxury that their society can't (yet) afford because they have to fulfil their core needs first even if that costs some lives due to pollution or exploitative labor. At some point they'll want to toughen up these restrictions (as China is doing now), but it's not because the lax restrictions were wrong or a regrettable mistake, it's only because the conditions have changed, they're richer, and now they can afford to be more picky about these issues. It's a tough choice to make this balance well, but it's not something that someone else can decide for them, the national governments are the ones that should be making this choice - unless they're totalitarian dictatorships, in which case the people should be given the say, but they won't without a potentially bloody coup.
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
those treaties are despicable. to receive US aid you have to essentially give carte blanche to US corporations to raid and rape your country and its people as they please. EDIT: essentially the hague court is enforcing the heinous practice of forcing the prioritization of corporate profits over country's sovereignty, and the wellbeing of its citizenry and envrionment
It seems like you are confusing some things. The Hague is enforcing international law - which is its purpose. The treaties were entered into by fully competent governments. These aren't uneducated minors being pressured into a deal they don't understand. They're national governments.
I think you are being rather naive about this. A country is not a person. Individuals can be in charge with entirely different agenda's than what is the interest of the country. Corruptible officials who let themselves get bought by powerful corporations to gain personal wealth. Not for the benefit of their own country.
When the citizens realize they have been screwed over by a corrupt leader, who gained power in illegal or dubious means, should they have no recourse?
History is full of stories about these kinds of unequal deals. It is how colonialism started. Powerful western enterprises pressured weaker nations into unfavorable conditions.
It happens everywhere. As a Norwegian I know very well how powerful American oil companies tried to screw us over big time when found oil in the North Sea. What saved Norway was in fact that we had an extremely anti-capitalist government full of socialists which challenged them on everything. We also benefitted from having low levels of corruption. There was no government official these companies could buy to screw us over. That is the problem of corruption. It makes you very vulnerable.
Re: Environmental lawyer who won a judgment against Chevron lost everything
#40Wow this sounds crazy. He won a lawsuit in Ecuador, so the company got a judge in Manhattan New York to put him on house arrest? Isn't that overstepping their jurisdiction and abuse of power? Seems like a huge miscarriage of justice. Didn't even know this was possible unless there's something I'm missing here? Sounds like someone is acting out of bounds here.
Charges were for violating US law. Chevron claimed that he paid off Equatorian judges, manufactured evidence etc. >> The decision hinged on the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge named Alberto Guerra, who claimed that Donziger had bribed him during the original trial and that the decision against Chevron had been ghostwritten. A lot of stuff happens in such places, but when you take on Chevron size companies, you bette…