On Monday Chevron submitted new evidence to their Manhattan lawsuit to appeal against the $19 billion charges levied against them for their involvement in the pollution of the Ecuadorian rainforest.
Vice president Hewitt Pate, has said that, "another participant in the fraud has now come forward rather than wait to be exposed by others."
He refers to the sworn statement made by the former Ecuadorian judge Alberto Guerra, who presided over the case between 2003 and 2004, which details how he was paid to illegally ghostwrite the judgements against Chevron which ordered them to pay $18.2 billion (it was upped to $19 billion in July 2012), and how the plaintiffs had promised to pay the official judge $500,000 if he made the ruling in their favour.
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Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs, lambasted Guerra as a "disgraced former Ecuadorean judge who is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Chevron to make false allegations about the Ecuador trial court judgment."
Guerra admitted he was being paid $38,000 by Chevron, who in turn admitted they were paying $10,000 to his family for monthly living expenses, and $2,000 for housing.
The plaintiffs claim that Texaco, bought by Chevron in 2001, polluted their rainforest with hundreds of unlined waste pits, however Chevron state that they cleaned all of their waste pits up, and the environmental damage is not of their doing.
Ecuador's highest court, the National Court of Justice, has appointed three judges to hear Chevron's final appeals against the decision.
By. James Burgess of Oiprice.com
James Burgess studied Business Management at the University of Nottingham. He has worked in property development, chartered surveying, marketing, law, and accounts. He has also… More