Two Chevron Lawyers Indicted in Ecuador

Source: Law.com

Two Chevron Lawyers Indicted in Ecuador
Alison Frankel
09-15-2008

Chevron's Ecuadorean quagmire got deeper and dirtier Friday, with the announcement that two longtime lawyers for the company have been indicted by the Ecuadorean government.

In-house lawyer Ricardo Reis Veiga and outside counsel Rodrigo Perez Pallares are accused of being part of a conspiracy to fraudulently certify that Chevron predecessor Texaco had completed the cleanup of more than 100 mines in the Ecuadorean rainforest in the 1990s. The government released Chevron from liability on the basis of those certifications.

Chevron, which is stuck in a potentially devastating environmental tort case in Ecuador, claimed Friday afternoon that the indictments are related to that multibillion-dollar civil litigation.

"The politically motivated indictments mark a renewal of the Ecuadorean state's attempts to disavow contractual obligations owed to Chevron from contracts signed in 1995 and 1998," the company said in a statement."Recent events in Ecuador leave no doubt that there is improper collaboration between the government and plaintiffs lawyers {in the civil case}. "

But a lawyer for the Republic of Ecuador, C. MacNeil Mitchell of Winston & Strawn, told The Am Law Daily that the government is not involved in the environmental tort litigation -- and that Chevron's attempt to link the indictments to the environmental suit is part of the company's strategy to discredit the Ecuadorean courts.



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