Category: Environment

From Coca Cola to Chevron, these corporates plunder third world’s wealth and US talks of Environment and Climate change.

Why doesn’t it reign in thee companies before preaching the world?

Lago Agrio, Ecuador – Chevron has found that dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste into Ecuador’s Amazon didn’t harm a single person or the environment, according to the company‘s final argument submitted to the Ecuador court hearing the historic environmental case.

Chevron denies in the 292-page document that there are damages despite admitting during the trial that it dumped billions of gallons of chemical-laden “water of formation” into the streams and rivers of the Amazon that indigenous groups relied on for their sustenance. The indigenous groups are now decimated because of the toxic waste, according to evidence submitted to the court.

“The plaintiffs have not established that there was any negligence” on the part of Chevron in its operations in Ecuador, the company claims in the document “The plaintiffs have not proven the existence of the supposed damages … that they allege in their lawsuit,” it added.

Curiously, Chevron’s final argument – called the “alegato” in Ecuador – can not be found on the company’s website or in its press materials. The company for weeks has refused to publicize its final argument in a case the company claims that it should win based on the evidence.

“Chevron is embarrassed to promote a document that is so clearly misleading,” said Karen Hinton, a spokesperson for the 30,000 plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit. “Chevron’s final argument makes a mockery out of the evidence at trial and is so deceptive that not even Chevron wants people to read it.”

Chevron from 1964 to 1990 operated a large oil concession in an area of Ecuador the size of Rhode Island, reaping billions of dollars in profits before pulling out of Ecuador in 1992.

http://current.com/1uduh4c

Related:

(CN) – A judge in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, entered an “adverse judgment” against Chevron on Monday, reportedly for at least $8 billion. What that judgment will mean for Chevron is uncertain at this time since a federal judge in Manhattan ruled last week that the Ecuadorians suing Chevron could not collect any part of the $113 billion in damages they sought for damage to their rainforest community from decades of oil drilling.

Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian attorney for the Ecuadorians, said he could not yet comment on the judgment in detail but that the decision “affirms what the plaintiffs have contended for the past 18 years about Chevron’s intentional and unlawful contamination of Ecuador’s rainforest.”

http://chevronecuadorlawsuitclearinghouse.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/chevron-loses-ecuador-case-for-environmental-damage/