The District Court of The Hague (Netherlands) has just confirmed that the $9.5 billion Ecuadorian judgment against ChevronCVX for alleged pollution in the Lago Agrio region was the product of fraud and corruption by the plaintiffs’ legal team, including bribery of the presiding judge and even ghostwriting of his judgment. [The fraud and corruption have been described in detail in many of my previous columns.] The Hague court upheld a 2018 arbitral award in Chevron’s favor that was issued by an international tribunal under the auspices of the Permanent Court of Arbitrations.
Although it’s not like “liberal” federal judges are any better on corporatist stuff. Hell, Gorush and Kav were the only two justices who wanted to grant cert in this case.
What’s more believable, little guy bribes judge who takes the money, decides in the little guy’s favor, and then still says little guy bribed him, or Chevron later paid the judge to say it and then put him on salary in the US and then he told the truth later?
I guess if you don’t believe multinational corporations are capable of buying courts while extracting resources and spoiling the developing world, that’s an easy question for you.
NormMacDonald - I don’t know if any of you are history buffs.
Bribery is when Chevron gives a bunch of money to the Federalist society and they have one of their most prominent members write the article that you are quoting from.
Complete hot take from just reading this thread and not knowing a thing about it, but it’s a pretty common conservative tactic to ignore procedural and systemic issues and instead focus on the character of the individuals.
Whether dude is a martyr or saint or a famewhore is irrelevant. People you think are shitty deserve fair justice and due process too.
Did Chevron use money and power to get special treatment in violation of his (and the Ecuadorians’) due process and civil rights? Pretty much the only relevant question imo.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Donziger et al engaged in corrupt practices but ultimately they were getting gamed by Chevron from the start. Chevron wanted the case to be heard under a judicial system out of the public eye where you probably have to engage in a bit of corruption to stand a chance against a global oil behemoth. In order to stand a chance Donziger et al probably then did try and play the game but lacked experience and concealed it poorly. Chevron, born yesterday, then claims to be outraged that Donziger et al had dabbled in corruption.
In my opinion Donziger’s cause was just but trusting to honest legal avenues doomed. He was invited to play, played and lost. His crime wasn’t so much corruption as sloppiness.
The judge that he supposedly bribed was later on chevron’s payroll and recanted. It’s quite possible that the only thing donziger was guilty of was losing a court case to one of the largest and most powerful and most ruthless organizations in the world. After winning the case that is.
Eta: that and the worst crime of all: contempt aka failure to obey.
Is there a better representative on this forum of the dumbest parts of the left than this stupid motherfucker?
Like, wouldn’t it, like, be better if we society just like didn’t have rules. We could also, like, just be assigned a factory job and it’s cool because actually we could just sit around and drink all day.
Yeah, there is. The guy siding with the private Chevron prosecution and the three year pretrial imprisonment for a misdemeanor contempt of court charge.
