Chevron Paying At Least $326,000 Bribe to Ecuadorian Judge For False Testimony

Chevron Paying At Least $326,000 Bribe to Ecuadorian Judge
Wednesday, 30 January 2013, 1:59 pm
Chevron Paying At Least $326,000 Bribe to Ecuadorian Judge For False Testimony

NEW YORK, Jan. 28 /CSRwire/ - In press statements, Chevron has admitted it will pay at least $326,000 to a former disgraced Ecuador judge for false testimony designed to help the oil giant evade a $19 billion judgment against the company for the world's worst oil contamination.

Last week the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, who won the judgment, revealed in a press release that Chevron had offered lucrative benefits packages to former Ecuadorian judges in return for false testimony in order to undermine the environmental trial that led to the $19 billion verdict.

Chevron's $326,000 payment to a former disgraced Ecuador judge, Alberto Guerra Bastides, includes a $38,000 one-time payment for Guerra's erroneous affidavit, immigration from Ecuador to Miami, Florida, a generous $12,000 a month salary, plus an undetermined amount in health insurance and legal costs -- a package of kickbacks and bribes similar to the ones offered to Chevron contractor Diego Borja, who secretly videotaped another Ecuador judge and falsely accused him of taking a bribe. Borja, who Chevron has paid at least $2.2 million since 2009, later recanted his story in a conversation with a friend after Chevron re-located him from Ecuador to California then Texas. See here and here.

The new effort – which representatives of the plaintiffs said was tantamount to bribery – comes at a time when Chevron seems increasingly prone to use desperate measures to shore up its ailing legal position after an Ecuador court found it guilty of deliberately dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste when it operated in Ecuador from 1964 to 1992. Chevron now faces seizure actions targeting an estimated $15 billion of assets in Canada and Brazil, while an Argentine court recently froze millions of dollars of company assets in that country.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1301/S00251/chevron-paying-at-least-326000-bribe-to-ecuadorian-judge.htm