Chevron Ecuador: Emails Point To Ecuador, Petroecuador, Working With Donziger

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More Chevron Ecuador news. About two years ago, an associate with Amazon Watch I will not name tried to bully Kevin Skaggs and Vlae Kershner of SFGate.com, the website of The San Francisco Chronicle, into making me alter a blog post where I asserted that Ecuador was a party to the lawsuit against Chevron. That means the Government of Ecuador was an active participant in the lawsuit, and runs counter to Steven Donziger’s claims that they were acting only with and for the native tribes of Ecuador’s Amazon region.

I proved that Ecuador’s Attorney General claimed that 90 percent of any damage award would go directly to the Government of Ecuador, which means Donziger’s working on behalf of the corrupt organization. Now, these emails, posted after Donziger was court-ordered to produce them, show how deep Donziger was in association with not just Ecuador but Petroecuador, where he tried to get the state-run oil company that took over Chevron’s oil fields in 1992 to sue them:

From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
This is the latest:
Steven Donziger [[email protected]
Tuesday, October 24,200612:10 PM
Joseph C. Kohn
update from Quito
1) Met extensively with Raul yesterday in Quito to go over the settlement plan. He liked it.
He also said he did not see it happening without the government participating at a
significant level. As for the Bonifaz-Kimerling issue, I told him if it came up to just
table it until later. We will try to work out a solution, and then deal with them if
necessary and only if necessary. He seemed confident that Chevron will want to talk. We are
going to sked a call with him, Neil and Eric to talk it through before proceeding further.
2) The depositions in the Sand matter are going well. Thus far, Chevron has deposed three
gov officials — the current AG, the Minister of Mines in 1995 when they signed the
settlement, and another ministry official at that time. All have steadfastly maintained that
the settlement did not apply to third party claims. There are six depositions skedded in the
next month, including Reis Veiga and Perez Pallares.
3) PetroEcuador’s new lawyer, Raul Moscoso, is an ally. He is willing to consider filing a civil suit against Chevron in Ecuador to rescind the settlement contract, using the fraud
claims that Winston withdrew in the Sand matter. This could be an extraordinary oppty for
us, although the Winston lawyers are sort of cool to it for reasons I am trying to fathom. I
think this could be major leverage in settlement discussions and it would provide a huge
boost in credibility to us in the Lago litigation. Do u see a downside?
4) Our final three inspections are going to take place Nov. 14-16. We need funds for those.
5) Please do your best to take care of my expenses and at least one invoice. These is
getting increasingly difficult for me to carry these expenses and invoices for so long.
Will call later.
SRD

This next email shows that Donziger and his co-workers were working to get the Government of Ecuador to pay the legal cost of the Washington DC law firm Winston & Strawn LLP in 2006. In this, they got the Attorney General of Ecuador to agree to pay 33 percent of the bill, and were working on getting Petroecuador’s help.

THIS CAME FROM JULIO YESTERDAY:
I don’t know if you are still interested, but I want to tell you that today I met with Attorney
General Borja and we talked about Winston’s money. He told me that he himself had asked President
Palacio to order entering into an agreement and the President gave the order to Chiriboga (supposedly the
agreement was being signed while we were talking this morning).!!
This is an agreement between Attorney General’s Office and Petroecuador and the agreement stipulates
that Attorney General’s Office will pay 33%.
Greetings,
Julio

From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:
Steven Donziger [[email protected]
Tuesday, October 17,20068:11 PM
Herrera, Raul
Re: mas
agree … let’s see what we can do. tks, srd
On 10/17/06, Herrera, Raul wrote:
I think it would be best because at the end of the day Min of Fin must approve the
disbursement to W&S even though PEc has instructed payment, as it all flows via Min of Fin to
the Central Bank to W&S. Thus, if Min of Fin objects to signing the agreement (to pay the
AG’s portion of the bill), then it will probably be the basis for an impediment in paying us
regardless if PEc has said it agreed to pay us. No?
—–Original Message—–
From: Steven Donziger [mailto: [email protected] ]
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 7:21 PM
To: Herrera, Raul
Subject: Re: mas
Our team is meeting with Rodas at 3 p.m. tomorrow … should we insist he sign
the agreement?
On 10/17/06, Herrera, Raul wrote:
I spoke to Raul Moscoso today who told me that PEc agreed to sign the
agreement with the AG (but sans Min of Finance) to pay our bills and that the Board of
Directors of PEc had today approved the same. He thought that by Friday they would have the
agreement in hand and payment forthcoming. I told him I was traveling to Quito on Sun Oct 22
through Wed Oct 25 and wanted to meet him on Mon, Oct 23. He said to call him to do so. I was
told by the AG’s office that the Min of Economy Rodas refuses to sign the agreement because
of some issue raised by his lawyers. Who the hell knows what is going on but this is the
latest. I will travel to Quito on dates noted above, will you?

The Upshot

What this proves is that, contrary to the picture they have worked to paint, the Government of Ecuador and the state-run Petroecuador company (the same one responsible for hundreds of oil spills since Chevron left Ecuador) was working with Steven Donziger and his people to get money from Chevron fraudulently. Chevron cleaned up the pits, left Ecuador, and gave the land and oil production equipment to Petroecuador for use in 1992. Since then, Petroecuador has screwed it all up, and spilled oil many times, but wants you to think it’s still Chevron’s fault.

This should be of alarm to any American business operator and to any American legislator. It calls into question all American / Ecuador trade agreements and puts a new light on this long-standing legal battle.

Stay tuned.

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