Nicolas Zambrano Lozada, the now-former Ecuador judge who was found to have taken a large, half-million dollar bribe in the Chevron (TexPet) Ecuador case, avoided showing up to court to testify about whether he really wrote the judgement for the $19 billion award the Ecuadorian judge slapped on Chevron for alleged claims of environmental damage during the operation of the mostly-Ecuadorian-owned TexPet oil organization until 1992.
Now that he’s skipped court, it kinda looks like he did.
According to Fortune Magazine, which wrote:
Based on evidence Chevron (CVX) has introduced in a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) case in federal court in Manhattan, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan held in March that there was probable cause to believe that the judgment, which the Amazon Defense Front is currently trying to enforce against the oil giant in the courts of Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, was in fact secretly written by the Front’s own lawyers, who were allegedly given that opportunity by the then presiding Ecuadorian judge, Nicolás Zambrano Lozada, in exchange for a promise of $500,000 from the recovery.
The Amazon Defense Coalition now faces the fact that their case has taken a major turn for the worst. In addition to investors jumping ship, lawyers have quit, and now the World’s courts will see that the entire case was based on fraudulent claims and questionable legal practices.
Stay tuned.