Shocker: Backwater-Type Corruption in South American Backwater's Suit Against Chevron

Many people may not know that Chevron, the large US oil company, was fined $18 billion dollars for supposed environmental misdeeds that occurred decades ago, by a company that wasn't even Chevron (Texaco at the time).  This trial and judgement was always known to be a farce and Chevron was never going to pay the award, but, still Chevron had to show that this was a sham in order to retain any ability to stand tall in the court of public opinion. 

Now, it appears that the case is unraveling it is revealed that it was a classic case of Third World backwater justice.

A former Ecuadorian judge has acknowledged his direct involvement in orchestrating a fraudulent judgment against Chevron Corp. in the environmental trial against the company in Lago Agrio, Ecuador.

In a sworn declaration filed Monday in New York federal court, Alberto Guerra, who presided over the case when it was first filed in 2003, reveals that he was paid thousands of dollars by the plaintiffs' lawyers and a subsequent judge, Nicholas Zambrano, for illegally ghostwriting judicial orders issued by Zambrano and steering the case in the plaintiffs' favor. Guerra, who is no longer a judge, attests that the plaintiffs' lawyers were permitted to draft the $18 billion judgment in their own favor after they promised to pay Zambrano a $500,000 bribe out of the judgment's enforcement proceeds, and that Guerra then reviewed the plaintiffs' lawyers' draft for Zambrano before the judge issued it as his own.

This crap just hurts Ecuador and its people.  Sigh.