The Chevron Texaco matter- and it is a “matter” because it is not- and has not been a real lawsuit for some years now. This so called law suit has come to stand as a metaphor for the president Correa Cuban –ALBA government and all who enable this crime spree underway. This data-filled story below summarizes accurately many points. We could not find one single item to disagree with or object to factually except….the author does not go far enough.

Fair enough but it remains stunning to contrast this analysis, factual though it may be, with the incompetent officials U.S. Department of State Reports about Ecuador- wholly inadequate and mostly fact-free since 2007. Today’s USTR and overpaid contractor-made available “Reports” on Ecuador remain chock full of holes which appear annually as if to pretend that facts do not matter. Why is that?

As for the Chevron lawsuit…we will say it again: there is no lawsuit. The reason the case was relocated to Ecuador no longer exists except in the minds of contracted billing offices. There is no basis for this law suit, as they call it, which has always been a class action extortion racket. Chevron’s in-Ecuador lawyers refused to consider the actual facts of the so called lawsuit with grand and arrogant incompetence: this has always been a game of attrition and an extortion racket, a fact which they are not even aware of nor ever considered. There is no legal basis for this lawsuit to exist even to make money for the faces of this scandalous abuse of the law. But incompetence and arrogance- while  unacceptable- in no way details the whole story of why this matter has proceeded for so long in the face of overwhelming fraud, lies, threats and incompetence by Chevron’s tepid team of lawyers and inchoate lobbyists. Chevron committed no crime in Ecuador except the face of its own failings to stem its 15 year incompetence and legal arrogance. But….that is no crime- it is expensive and one might hope that their shareholders demand rectifying actions. What we at ECrisis demand is that the facts are on the table and that the government of Ecuador cease and desist its partnering with an extortion racket in Lago Agrio. Thereto, the USA must follow suit and upend now its overpaid cadre of liars and ninnyhammers enabling this racket. A full forensic audit of the US AID abettors in crime is a useful and lawful place to begin.  The same must be on the table from the Correa regime of liars and manipulators who have lied for years to their own citizens.

Although innocent of the so called law suit claims, Chevron to date has refused any insights and complimentary support action to end this lawsuit charade in Ecuador on the grounds that there is no lawsuit. There is no discovery. There is no due diligence. There is nothing but mountains of lies by the government of Ecuador and a gang of US trial lawyers seeking billions. There are no legitimate grounds for Chevron to be in a court room in Ecuador- even a one horse border town close to the FARC intel headquarters where scant few have a remote knowledge of life’s essentials. The government of Ecuador should desist and end their support and active role in the racketeering gambit underway. Ecuador will lose. Chevron, for its part, needs to stand up and state why they are shutting this specious non-case down and walk out. But….Chevron’s paid contractors will not permit this expensive self- defense, admirable though it is after 10 years of arrogance and ignorance ignoring the problem, relying on flawed local lawyers to deny the gravity of the extortion racket, instead assuring all that their prowess alone would rectify matters.

What we do not understand is why the Obama White House and the U.S. Department of State- not to mention waves of U.S. Congresspersons from the Democratic Party have actively abused U.S. funds to personally appear in Ecuador to gift the rackets with their veneer of U.S. governmental support and praise. This is remarkably upsetting and….illicit. And yet Chevron failed itself to denounce these cretins of malfeasance as if their fears of offending the powerful U.S. Democrats would be soothed by complicit silence as their company ridiculously pays out millions to defend itself over matters that it has never been a party to except by its own stupidity to fear the U.S. Democrats and fear the extortion rackets.

As it is, we compliment Chevron Texaco for its honest acts to pull back the ALBA curtain of corruption in Ecuador. The company has unwittingly per5formed a service with the U. Democratic Party in Congress- notable Mr. Delahunt. Dodd, McGovern, Eliott Engle and John Kerry have refused to do in order to enable Mr. Donziger’s illicit extortion racket, also called the “lawsuit” against Chevron,  in Ecuador, supported by Speaker Pelosi’s abuse of U.S. federal monies. The U.S. Department of State itself cannot even bring itself to be honest about this travesty because their own actors- on staff and paid contractors actually believe that lying about the enormously corrupt Correa- or as Tom Shannon said before jetting off to Brasilia- we like to throw in the towel and say nothing/do nothing about Ecuador. Shannon- perhaps the more previously honorable of the lot was and remains a feckless blob of the sustained loss of integrity at the US foreign service team. It is disgusting to all when the U.S. government refuses to state the facts about a corrupt nation while continuously supporting an old law school chum of president Obama’s, currently lying his way thorough the Andean region history books about the racket that is Ecuador today.

It is unacceptable to maintain any happy face about the government of Ecuador which has deteriorated beyond the pale. Ecuador holds no justice and no democracy and nothing but a scapegrace- Correa’s- full authority over every facet of living. To pretend otherwise is to be complicit with Correa and Dozinger’s extortion scam.

For our part, we hope that the threatened appeal through the U.S. courts by the Correa regime to assist Correa’s legal actors- who should be disbarred for lying- ends soon. We also suggest that the U.S. courts demand full payments for Correa’s specious demands that U.S. contract law and treaties are irrelevant and attempted to force a U.S. federal judge to break with U.S. laws and rule in his favor. Why the judge even took up this matter is beyond reckoning since it had no merit except to establish non-rule of law precedent in the U.S. courts, again a matter wholly unacceptable and repulsive. But that is Correa- he has no respect for anything but his addiction to manipulative living. Ecuadoreans can and must end their long dark retreat in to this cult of manipulation and replace Correa and his criminal compadres, also called the Russo-Iranian axis of criminal adventures. For its part, the Obama Democrats have much explaining to do. Their role in this racket to bring down Chevron is not inconsequential and of course ends any semblance of fair play by these anti-USA actors littering the U.S. taxpayer panoply, supplanting integrity and even honest reporting. Indeed, Chevron has a case against the U.S. Democrats, who they are afraid of, for slander and malfeasance while aiding and abetting criminal rackets. Peru’s Montesinos thrived for about 15 years or so with this type of gambit. Blessedly he is behind bars today. One might ask Heather Hodges why it took so long to get to that moment and at what cost to U.S. integrity?  And do not forget to ask her in her wisdom….did this really help matters in the long run? No doubt she will spew the Luigi- Peter –Karen party line … a twisted justification – a perversion of the means justifying the ends. It is past time to stop this and play with a straight deck of unmarked cards. Ecuador needs many things but it does not need enabling of and by the USA to perpetuate a criminal racket that is the government of Ecuador.

The valid cry, contrary to the lies spewed about the Correa pink curtain paradise of pervs and criminals in Ecuador,  has gone up for support to rebuild rule of law in Ecuador and supplant graft with integrity. We ask- what are you going to do about it?

-Pedro Camargo

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Ecuador's $27 Billion Shakedown of Chevron

by Donald Lambro    Human Events

Posted 03/17/2010 ET

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s $27 billion environmenal lawsuit against Chevron has all the characteristics of a corrupt banana republic:

Judicial intimidation, bribery and bogus studies by paid-off experts.

In the long-running, government-backed suit against the giant American oil company, which vows it will never give in to what it calls a “shakedown” by the government and its political cronies, Chevron rejects that it is liable for any claims of environmental damage in the country’s Amazon region.

“The government of Ecuador says that we should be paying for this and we are not going to. We are going to stand and fight this suit,” Donald Campbell, Chevron’s manager for external communications, told HUMAN EVENTS.

The oil fields at issue were drilled and pumped under a partnership with Texaco and Ecuador’s state-owned oil company, Petroecuador, which ultimately seized all of the fields, assuming 100 percent responsibility over the oil concession in 1992. Texaco was subsequently bought by Chevron in an acquisition deal in 2001 that included a full release from Ecuador for any and all claims against them.

But in a hidden deal with the Ecuador government in the environmental case, lawyers chose to sue only Chevron, not Petroecuador which has been responsible for hundreds of oil spills in the area ever since they took over all drilling rights.

Attorney Cristobal Bonifaz, one of the original architects in the civil suit, had given Ecuador officials assurances that state-run Petroecuador would not be sued for its damage to the area or by the natives living there, if the government gave their full support to their case.

“I delivered notarized documents to the Attorney General confirming the indigenous people’s commitment from suing the government,” Bonifaz told the Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio in a 1997 interview.

Then the trial lawyers brought environmental charges against Chevron, for damages that they said were left behind by Texaco, demanding that the company pay $27 billion in clean up costs on sites they said had polluted the lands, poisoned its rivers and injured the health of its people. “They knowingly ignore Petroecuador’s ongoing pollution and environmental mismanagement,” Chevron said.

Ecuador’s debt-ridden, over-regulated economy could use the money.

President Correa, elected in 2007 on a platform of sweeping government controls over banking and the oil industry, has run the country into the ground -- vowing to default on its massive debts and oppose any and all free trade pacts with the U.S.

Since then, “capital flight has soared, and foreign direct investment has fallen,” according  to the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Economic Freedom that showed Ecuador’s rating has dropped toward the least free economies of the world.

Correa, closely aligned with Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez, has cracked down on the news media and tightened regulations on business and labor. There is widespread corruption in the judiciary, and property rights are abused with impunity.

Ecuador “has ample petroleum reserves, but the government-run oil industry is mismanaged and corrupt, and production is declining. Factions in the legislature fuel political and institutional instability, and there is a lack of respect for the rule of law,” the Index concluded in its report earlier this year.

It is against this bleak political backdrop that the government has been relentlessly backing a lawsuit that has become a long-running soap opera of under-handed tactics and hidden deal making that have undermined its case.

Among the many allegations and developments in the case:

-- The Correa regime has established a political atmosphere in the country where judges are vulnerable to intimidation and that has become an issue in this case.

Arturo Torres, judicial editor of El Comercio, an independent newspaper in Ecuador, told Dow Jones News Service that “Judges fear ruling in any way that could be seen as going against Correa. They know they can lose their position and that they can be called traitor to the country.”

-- A video tape, obtained by Chevron, was made in August, 2009 of an Ecuadorian judge engaged in a conversation that allegedly offered him a bribe of $3 million if he were to rule against Chevron.

-- The mining engineer who authored an allegedly independent report to assess damages to the oil fields, who recommended that Chevron pay $27 billion in damages, turned out to have serious conflicts of interest in the case.

Chevron said Richard Cabrera who made the report was “the majority owner of an oil field remediation company, CAMPET that stands to gain financially from a judgement against Chevron. CAMPET was registered to perform oilfield remediation and other services for Petroecuador.”

“Cabrera was not only paid solely by the plaintiffs, but he openly relied on them to staff his effort while seeking to obstruct Chevron’s representatives from even observing his work,” Chevron officials said.

“His work product is devoid of scientific content, lacks even the most basic evidentiary support, and assesses monetary relief for alleged environmental damage and health claims he has never even bothered to investigate, inspect or verify,” Chevron said in a response to the Cabrera Report.

-- After Cabrera’s conflicts of interest were revealed, Dow Jones News Service reported that a second court appointed expert said he had found no evidence of hydrocarbon contamination in rivers in the regions where Chevron is being sued for poisoning the environment.

Instead, court-appointed biologist Jorge Bermeo said he found high levels of bacterial contamination that came from fecal matter that could be the cause of the local native population’s illnesses. He also found trace metals in local fish.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs criticized the report, charging that it reached conclusions that Chevron wanted. But Bermeo told the San Francisco Sentinel that “No representative of the company has ever pressured me or tried to influence my report.”

Pablo Fajardo, lawyer for the plaintiffs, isn’t buying that. “What has been found in fish has direct relation to the oil activity, and yet, the expert is trying to provide a tool to Chevron’s defense,” he told reporters.

The latest development in the case broke last week in New York where U .S. District Court Judge Leonard B. Sand rejected a suit filed by Ecuador to block Chevron’s effort to have the dispute settled through international arbitration under the rules of the U.N. Commission on International Trade Law.

Ecuador Attorney General Diego Garcia said Thursday that the Correa government was considering an appeal of the judge’s ruling.