Ecuador judge in Chevron cases confesses to taking bribes from plaintiffs

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix:

A former Ecuadorean judge who presided over a pollution case against Chevron Corp. testified that he and a colleague who issued a $19 billion judgment against the company in the environmental lawsuit were bribed.

The judge, Alberto Guerra, took the stand yesterday in Manhattan federal court during the trial in a racketeering suit in which Chevron alleged that the verdict in Ecuador was procured through fraud.

Guerra has said in a declaration filed with the court that he was paid thousands of dollars by lawyers for the plaintiffs to steer the case in their favor. Another former Ecuadorean judge who issued the $19 billion ruling, Nicolas Zambrano, was promised $500,000 from the proceeds, Guerra said in the November filing. Guerra said he also routinely ghost wrote judgments for Zambrano and was paid for those services.

Legal saga: Diary of the legal drama in lawsuit against Chevron

“It could not seem as though all of the orders were being issued for the benefit of the plaintiffs,” he said through an interpreter in court yesterday, explaining why some of the rulings he was involved with favored Chevron. “The idea was to not have it look suspicious.”

Guerra said in court that he was given the bribes sometimes in the form of deposits in his bank account and other times in envelopes filled with $20 and $50 bills.

Zambrano has denied that he was bribed by the plaintiffs and that Guerra or the plaintiffs were involved in writing his decisions. He may testify later on behalf of lawyers for the Ecuadorean plaintiffs, who sued over pollution in the Amazon rainforest, the attorneys said.

20-Year Battle

Chevron, the second-largest U.S.-based energy firm, claims that lawyers for the plaintiffs, led by Manhattan attorney Steven Donziger, engaged in a scheme to extort money from the company during a 20-year legal battle over pollution in an Ecuador oil concession.

The company is seeking an order from U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan barring lawyers for the Ecuadoreans from trying to enforce the 2011 pollution judgment in countries where Chevron has assets.

Central to the “scheme to defraud and extort Chevron is the fact that Ecuador’s judiciary has developed systemic weaknesses and corruption,” the San Ramon, California-based company said in a complaint filed in February 2011. “The conspirators are aware of this fact, and have sought to exploit it.”
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This case has always looked suspicious to me.  It played out on a stage of what appears to be rank corruption of the judicial process on a case that should have been dismissed because of an earlier settlement with the government.