NY judge has ruled in favor of Chevron Corp. saying the Ecuadorian pollution judgment was procured by fraud, the WSJ reported. The case is known as Amazon Chernobyl alleging that Chevron is responsible for widespread contamination of the country’s Amazon basin in 1964-1992. Judge Lewis Kaplan said that U.S. lawyer leading the Ecuadoreans Steven Donziger and members of his team were engaged in “repeated acts of fraud, bribery, money laundering” and obstruction of justice. In particular, Donziger is said to provide Ecuadorean judge with a $500,000 payout so that he ruled in favor of Ecuador.
As a result, Kaplan said the judgment secured by bribing and ghostwriting court documents was wrong. Meanwhile, Donziger pledged he will appeal against the verdict.
The fine imposed in a previous judgment in November 2013 was $9.5 billion. Before this, the government of Ecuador wanted to impose a $19 billion fine on Chevron. In 2011, the initial fine was $8.6 billion. However, it was considerably raised later as the company did not want to apologize for pollution.