Speaker 1: We left off last time with each side accusing the
Speaker 1: other of bribing Ecuadorian judge Alberto Ghera, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get back to the end of that story today,
Speaker 1: I promise. But first we need to talk about another judge,
Speaker 1: the American Lewis A Caplan, Senior District court judge in
Speaker 1: the Southern District of New York. Caplan approved Chevron's various
Speaker 1: subpoenas prior to the RICO being filed. He oversaw the
Speaker 1: rico trial itself, and he's the judge behind Stephen Donziger's
Speaker 1: current troubles too. He's the guy who charged Donziger with
Speaker 1: first civil and then criminal contempt. Prior to his appointment
Speaker 1: to the bench, Caplan was a lawyer. He worked at
Speaker 1: Paul Weiss ex On Mobiles, law firm of choice, defending
Speaker 1: tobacco companies in the seventies and eighties. As a judge,
Speaker 1: he has a reputation for ruling in favor of corporations.
Speaker 1: Kaplan ruled on behalf of R. J. Reynolds in a
Speaker 1: cigarette smuggling case in two thousand and two, and he
Speaker 1: ruled in defense of the accounting firm KPMG when the
Speaker 1: government went after them for creating tax shelters for the wealthy.
Speaker 1: According to Stephen Donziger's attorney, Lauren Reagan, Caplan has been
Speaker 1: a friend to Chevron throughout the company's decade long pursuit
Speaker 1: of her client.
Speaker 2: Ecuador's Supreme Court validated the judgment and said, yep, they
Speaker 2: always used nine billion dollars. And Chevron basically gave him
Speaker 2: the finger and said, you know, pulled all their assets
Speaker 2: out of Ecuador. I was like, oh, no one here
Speaker 2: for you to take. And so then, you know, the
Speaker 2: way the legal system works is you can go to
Speaker 2: other countries where assets exist and ask that country to
Speaker 2: assist in collecting the debt. And so don Zigger and
Speaker 2: the legal team, you know, started going to European countries
Speaker 2: and Canada and other places to begin collecting on the judge.
Speaker 2: And at that time, Chevron started going around to various
Speaker 2: states in the US asking the US court to put
Speaker 2: a stop basically.
Speaker 3: To those proceedings.
Speaker 2: And most states in the US shoot him away and
Speaker 2: said that's that's not real. But when they got to
Speaker 2: Judge Kaplan's court in the Southern District of New York,
Speaker 2: you know, he's a former tobacco lobbyist, and so Chevron
Speaker 2: realized they had a friend in that courtroom on this
Speaker 2: like minor proceeding. And then while they were in that
Speaker 2: minor proceeding, it was Kaplin that said, you know, this
Speaker 2: sounds like a RICO case.
Speaker 1: Kaplan has denied this. He says Chevron already made its
Speaker 1: intention to file a RICO claim known before he made
Speaker 1: these comments. Donziger and the Logo Ugriel plaintiffs have accused
Speaker 1: Kaplan of bias against them on other fronts too. Here's
Speaker 1: Donald Moncayo. You might remember him from earlier episodes. He's
Speaker 1: the guy who used to lead people on tours of
Speaker 1: the toxic pits in the Amazon. Moncayo came to New
Speaker 1: York to testify in the Rico case.
Speaker 4: Yes, Paramil, who is corpor mas l.
Speaker 1: He says for me, Caplin was a corporate judge, the
Speaker 1: most racist judge I've ever seen. We've heard stuff like
Speaker 1: this from quite a few Ecuadorians and their lawyers. They've
Speaker 1: told us that Caplin didn't really understand Spanish, that he
Speaker 1: didn't grasp Ecuadorian law or the differences between Ecuadorian law
Speaker 1: and US law, and that he was just generally dismissive
Speaker 1: of the Ecuadorians. We're going to dig into whether and
Speaker 1: how that played out in the Rigo trial right after
Speaker 1: this quick break. Zoe Littlepage, who represented Donziger in the
Speaker 1: Rico trial, said the court's preferential treatment of Chevron was
Speaker 1: obvious from the jump.
Speaker 5: Judge Caplin likes to run a very tight ship, as
Speaker 5: many federal judges do, and he was not amused by activism,
Speaker 5: and he certainly was not amused by Stephen's attempt to
Speaker 5: be both an activist and a lawyer. In fact, he
Speaker 5: appeared to be sort of insulted by lawyers who went
Speaker 5: beyond just being an advocate and actually being an activist. So, remember,
Speaker 5: all of the underlying facts of the case was Stephen
Speaker 5: and many activists groups attempts to get the word out
Speaker 5: about what was happening in the Amazon, and.
Speaker 3: So for a lawyer to sort of cross those lines
Speaker 3: and attend protests.
Speaker 5: And be a part of an activism movement appeared to
Speaker 5: upset and anger Judge Caplan.
Speaker 1: Little Page says even the logistics of the courtroom favored Chevron.
Speaker 5: Judge Caplan gave Chevron half of the room, so they
Speaker 5: had five or six rows of benches. Then he gave
Speaker 5: the media every other seat except for one row, which
Speaker 5: seats about six or seven people, so that was all
Speaker 5: we were allowed to bring in on our triality was
Speaker 5: six or seven people because they couldn't sit. He also
Speaker 5: gave Chevron a jury room for all their extra lawyers
Speaker 5: who couldn't fit in their five or six rows, and
Speaker 5: all their legal assistants and all their boxes. And in
Speaker 5: that courtroom we had several human rights nonprofit law firms
Speaker 5: had provided us with lawyers to help with briefing and
Speaker 5: with getting the case ready at night, so we had
Speaker 5: four or five volunteer lawyers.
Speaker 3: Who were working for us.
Speaker 5: So in the mornings we would be lined up in
Speaker 5: this very long line. We had to get there very early,
Speaker 5: and it was in October November, so it was cold,
Speaker 5: so we would be all bundled up. We would be
Speaker 5: in this long line to get through security to get
Speaker 5: into the courthouse, and we'd have our blow ups and
Speaker 5: our boxes with us and our briefcases, and then you
Speaker 5: would see a row of five black Lincoln suburbans arrive
Speaker 5: with tinted windows, and out of it would come the
Speaker 5: senior management of Chevron, their head of litigation, their entire
Speaker 5: legal team, and they were ushered in through a separate
Speaker 5: entrance as VIPs, so they didn't have to stand in
Speaker 5: the line with all the rest of us.
Speaker 3: They would get out.
Speaker 5: And go straight into the courtroom, So we would have
Speaker 5: been in line for forty five minutes when they would
Speaker 5: arrive and go straight through.
Speaker 1: Julio Gomez is the attorney for the Ecuadorians named as
Speaker 1: defendants in the Rico case. He says he also saw
Speaker 1: examples of this, particularly with respect to how stacked the
Speaker 1: case was in favor of Chevron, simply by virtue of
Speaker 1: Chevron having the budget to put what Gomez, Little Page,
Speaker 1: and Donziger all described as a quote unquote army of
Speaker 1: lawyers on this case.
Speaker 4: For example, one of the things we wanted to do
Speaker 4: in our case is to have live testimony. In any
Speaker 4: usual case, you have a witness get on the stand
Speaker 4: and they give what's they direct examination. Their attorney questions them,
Speaker 4: what happened to you, what did you see, what did
Speaker 4: you observe, et cetera, and then the other side cross
Speaker 4: examines you live. That's the way most trials are conducted
Speaker 4: in the United States. In New York, in this particular, trial.
Speaker 4: New York has this practice where, well, you know, that
Speaker 4: can take too long. So what we'll do is we'll
Speaker 4: have the witness submit a written testimony, and then the
Speaker 4: other side just gets up and cross examines them based
Speaker 4: on that written testimony that they submitted. Think about what
Speaker 4: happens in a case where you are a small team
Speaker 4: up against Chevron. Chevron has thirty witnesses, and a day
Speaker 4: before trial or two days before trial, you are handed
Speaker 4: thirty written testimonies with you know, ten to fifty exhibits each.
Speaker 4: Now you, as the cross examining attorney, has to read
Speaker 4: all twenty or thirty of these written testimonies in a
Speaker 4: short period of time, process all all of those exhibits,
Speaker 4: prepare all of your cross examination questions, and come into
Speaker 4: court and start doing one after the other after the other.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's just impossible. I would have much preferred having
Speaker 4: them testify live, because not only do they have to
Speaker 4: tell their story properly, and some witnesses, no matter how
Speaker 4: well you prepare them, are going to screw up when
Speaker 4: they give their testimony in court.
Speaker 3: That would have benefited us.
Speaker 4: But more importantly, we would have heard the testimony in
Speaker 4: real time and had time to react to it slowly,
Speaker 4: as opposed to being bombarded with all of the testimony
Speaker 4: at once and then being required to prepare to go
Speaker 4: in and cross examine and everybody in the next week.
Speaker 1: Guma says he actually asked Caplan to space out the testimony,
Speaker 1: have live testimony and live cross examinations, but to no avail.
Speaker 4: We made repeated appeals to Kaplan that take into account
Speaker 4: our life act of resources to develop procedures for the
Speaker 4: trial that could counteract the prejudice that these procedures would
Speaker 4: cause on the plaintiffs, on Steven Donziger, and on the
Speaker 4: Ecuadorian plaintiffs. And I don't remember any instance when the
Speaker 4: court made those kinds of accommodations to us. Judge says, no,
Speaker 4: we do this all the time in New York. There's
Speaker 4: nothing unusual about doing this the way, and we're going
Speaker 4: to do it this way in this case.
Speaker 1: The mismatch of resources is something that came up a
Speaker 1: lot when we started digging into the Rico case. A
Speaker 1: couple episodes back, filmmaker Joe Berlinger said something about how
Speaker 1: we have a justice system where deep pockets prevail. Gomez
Speaker 1: said something very similar about the Rico trial.
Speaker 4: What would it take to mount the challenge to that
Speaker 4: another oil company. The people don't understand the incredible, incredible
Speaker 4: inequity in our legal system to finances. Know, if you
Speaker 4: have the money, you can right the most incredibly prepared,
Speaker 4: beautifully articulated briefs. You can hire the best investigators. You
Speaker 4: can look under every stone, you can hire the best
Speaker 4: experts with the best credentials. I mean, you can, whether
Speaker 4: whether you're on the right or on the side of wrong,
Speaker 4: you can create an incredible presentation with resources. If you don't,
Speaker 4: everything is less than satisfactory. That's why you know. That's
Speaker 4: why you know. When what are the proper matchups? It's
Speaker 4: it's Microsoft only only. Can only go up against Google,
Speaker 4: Apple can only go up against Samsung, Chevron can only
Speaker 4: go up against Exon Mobile, and vice versa. Because that's
Speaker 4: the only way to do it right. To meet every expert,
Speaker 4: to meet every motion, you need exactly the same resources.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately our judicial system does not take that into account.
Speaker 1: That mismatch started to come into play more and more
Speaker 1: as the case wore on. It showed up in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways, like the number and length of
Speaker 1: motions that Chevron filed.
Speaker 4: You know, you could work on this case twenty four
Speaker 4: hours a day, not sleep, not eat, not spend time
Speaker 4: with your family, not spend time working on other cases
Speaker 4: to earn a living, and you wouldn't have enough time
Speaker 4: to do everything that a thousand attorneys on the other
Speaker 4: side were doing or piling on you to do, because
Speaker 4: Chevron would file every type of motion they could at
Speaker 4: every single instance they did it. That was just it
Speaker 4: was insane.
Speaker 1: On top of what was happening in court, Chevron had
Speaker 1: attorneys working the case out of the courts too.
Speaker 4: Chevron plays dirty by putting pressure on pieces of the
Speaker 4: strategy that would benefit them. So, for example, they went
Speaker 4: after the Ecuadorians had hired an environmental engineering firm to
Speaker 4: do the analysis in Ecuador, and Chevron was making arguments
Speaker 4: that those analyzes were not only unreliable, they were being
Speaker 4: ghosts written by this firm for the other experts in Ecuador.
Speaker 4: One of the things that Chevron did was to put
Speaker 4: you know, that's an environmental engineering firm. It's a business
Speaker 4: like any other business. The Ecuador and plaintiffs are not
Speaker 4: their only client. They have other clients that they do
Speaker 4: work for and that's how they earn their living, and
Speaker 4: that's how they pay their rent, and that's how they
Speaker 4: pay their employees. Well, Chevron would contact those other clients
Speaker 4: and try to persuade them to stop using the environmental
Speaker 4: engineering firm. They would defame the firm to those other clients,
Speaker 4: so that if you continued to work on the case,
Speaker 4: or if you did not do Chevron's bidding, and by
Speaker 4: doing Chevron's bidding, I mean switch sides.
Speaker 1: Gumez is talking about Stratus, the environmental engineering firm that
Speaker 1: worked on the Cabrera Report. Now, remember the Cabrera Report
Speaker 1: is something we've about quite a bit. It's this report
Speaker 1: that the Damage's assessment was initially based on in Ecuador.
Speaker 1: Mastro says Donziger and the Ecuadorians were far too involved
Speaker 1: in what was supposed to be an independent report and
Speaker 1: that Stratus should not have been writing any part of it.
Speaker 1: Donziger says it was all perfectly legal within Ecuadorian law.
Speaker 1: In either case, Chevron went after Stratus hard. They told
Speaker 1: the company's clients and anyone else who would listen that
Speaker 1: Stratus was part of an international conspiracy to defraud Chevron.
Speaker 1: In one case, Chevron even sent a letter to the
Speaker 1: Portland Harbor in Oregon, which had hired Stratus for a project.
Speaker 1: They wrote, quote, because of the extensive evidence of corrupt
Speaker 1: activity on the part of Stratus in furtherance of the
Speaker 1: claims in Ecuador, Chevron believes that it would be in
Speaker 1: the best interest of all the parties involved at the
Speaker 1: Portland Harbor site for the trustees to sever ties with Stratus.
Speaker 1: Multiple letters were sent to the Portland Council too. Vron
Speaker 1: posted an article and video on its website accusing Stratus
Speaker 1: of fraud too. At one point, Stratus even countersuits Chevron
Speaker 1: for libel and slander. That complaint reads quote. Filing suit
Speaker 1: against Stratus was not enough for Chevron. Now it has
Speaker 1: embarked on an extra judicial campaign of malicious defamation and
Speaker 1: deliberate interference with Stratus's business to tortiously destroy Stratus and
Speaker 1: the livelihood of its employees, and to prevent Stratus from
Speaker 1: being able to successfully defend itself a trial against Chevron's allegations.
Speaker 1: We asked Randy Mastro, the attorney heading up the Rico
Speaker 1: case for Chevron, about this.
Speaker 6: When you are the victim of a fraud.
Speaker 7: And as an extortion scheme, as Chevron believed it was.
Speaker 6: It took.
Speaker 7: Tenacity and conviction and perseverance and principle to stand up
Speaker 7: to the fraud, so that Chevron asserted every form that
Speaker 7: would listen that this is what we believe happened here
Speaker 7: and it was wrong.
Speaker 6: And then for Chevron to prove it.
Speaker 7: I mean, I I.
Speaker 6: Think that Chevron not only had every right to do that,
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 7: It's it speaks volumes about you know, Chevron on behalf
Speaker 7: of its shareholders and stakeholders.
Speaker 6: I'm doing the right thing and not being m hm.
Speaker 7: Pressured or or holding back in the face of what
Speaker 7: I believed to be a fraud and mix extortion scheme
Speaker 7: than not paying tribute to anyone involved in that fraud
Speaker 7: or extortion scheme.
Speaker 1: Two years after his original deposition, Stratus VP Douglas Beltman
Speaker 1: recanted his testimony. In that recantation, Beltman notes that he
Speaker 1: and colleague and Macet wrote the Cabrera Report with no
Speaker 1: interaction with Cabrera. He also notes repeatedly that they were
Speaker 1: never directed to try to separate Petro Ecuador's responsibilities from Texico's,
Speaker 1: which became Chevron's, and that they were instructed by Donziger
Speaker 1: to use a contamination standard that would increase the cost
Speaker 1: of remediation. The focus is specifically on Damage's claims and
Speaker 1: whether there was evidence to back them up, and Beltman
Speaker 1: never does say anything like there was no contamination. It's
Speaker 1: more about who's responsible financially for the contamination, not whether
Speaker 1: or not it exists, or even whether or not Texico
Speaker 1: had a hand in it.
Speaker 4: They convinced that firm or forced that firm, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: to switch sides and turn against the Ecuadorian plaintifs who
Speaker 4: were their clients.
Speaker 1: Gomez and little Page made this argument in court as well,
Speaker 1: but Kaplan wasn't having it. We asked Donziger about Beltman's
Speaker 1: recantation too, because he looms large in it as the
Speaker 1: person directing Beltman's work.
Speaker 8: Douglas Beltman. That just makes me weep and hurt. Doug
Speaker 8: was one of our scientific experts, a wonderful man of
Speaker 8: high integrity and intelligence and skill. And Chevron just I
Speaker 8: think they just destroyed his life. I mean, they named
Speaker 8: his company as a defendant in the Rico case. They
Speaker 8: got a law firm, and they countersued chevn N for
Speaker 8: defamation and tortious interference with their business and in the
Speaker 8: end of the day to settle the case as between
Speaker 8: the consultancy, which was called Stratus, Beltman and another scientist
Speaker 8: there named Anne Mace, and Chevron, Stratus came to an
Speaker 8: agreement that required Beltman and Mace to put in affidavits
Speaker 8: that contained a ton of false information. Telling LYE Beltman
Speaker 8: never came to testify. And the sad part is, I
Speaker 8: think when Doug wrote that affidavit, you know, with all
Speaker 8: this distorted or false information, I think he thought that
Speaker 8: would be the end of his problem. But what ended
Speaker 8: up happening is right after he submitted it, his partners
Speaker 8: fired him anyway, and he hasn't been heard from since.
Speaker 8: So I don't know what happened to him, and I'm scared. Honestly,
Speaker 8: He's another one of Chevron's victims, and you know, I
Speaker 8: worry about him. I think about him a lot. Actually,
Speaker 8: I have no idea where he is.
Speaker 1: My co reporter on this season, Karen Savage found Doug Beltman.
Speaker 1: He's retired now and can't talk publicly about the case
Speaker 1: because he signed various agreements with Chevron that prohibit it.
Speaker 1: He said he wished he could talk to us, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't, and he sounded pretty scared to attract any
Speaker 1: attention from Chevron. Julio Gomez, the lawyer for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs,
Speaker 1: said he also heard from lawyers at some of the
Speaker 1: firms working on the case that Chevron was calling their
Speaker 1: other clients applying pressure to Joe Cohne, a prominent lawyer
Speaker 1: who had helped to fund the Lago Augdio litigation, was
Speaker 1: another partner who testified against Donziger.
Speaker 9: Okay, so one of the things that I saw is
Speaker 9: a guy named Joseph Cohne, Yeah, testified against you, said
Speaker 9: you obtained millions of dollars in litigation funding and didn't
Speaker 9: keep him in the loop basically and misrepresented what was
Speaker 9: going on.
Speaker 3: Tell us more about that.
Speaker 8: Joe Cone is a prominent lawyer in Philly. His law
Speaker 8: firm funded most of the case. They funded my work
Speaker 8: on the case. For the most part, we worked well together.
Speaker 8: He's a good, solid lawyer. When Chevron started to make
Speaker 8: these allegations that the Cabrera report was done wrongly or fraudulently,
Speaker 8: and then they filed the Rico case, Joe got extremely nervous.
Speaker 8: I think he was petrified that the Rico litigation would
Speaker 8: name him as a defendant and he would be you know,
Speaker 8: that time, they were suing us for sixty billion dollars,
Speaker 8: largest potential liability in US history, And I think he
Speaker 8: thought his life was going to be destroyed and he
Speaker 8: was going to be bankrupted, and his firm was going
Speaker 8: to be closed down by a liability that might come
Speaker 8: out of this fake Rico case. So I think out
Speaker 8: of that fear, Joe started to cooperate with Chevron. I mean,
Speaker 8: it's really no different in my mind than what a
Speaker 8: lot of people did to get out from under the
Speaker 8: pressure that Chevron and Judge Kapel were putting on them.
Speaker 8: Other law firms who are working with US did this
Speaker 8: as well, but many others stayed in there. I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't want people to think that people just abandoned
Speaker 8: the case, but there were certain individuals, Joe Cone among them,
Speaker 8: who basically abandoned their duties to the case and to
Speaker 8: the people of Ecuador into their own integrity in my view,
Speaker 8: to get Chevron off their back.
Speaker 1: The people who could have easily abandoned Donziger and didn't
Speaker 1: were the Ecuadorians. The US courts really had no jurisdiction
Speaker 1: over them. That's true in general, but in this case
Speaker 1: in particular. Keep in mind that Chevron had argued itself
Speaker 1: about a decade ago that the New York courts had
Speaker 1: no jurisdiction over what had happened in Ecuador. Here's their attorney,
Speaker 1: who you'll Gomez again.
Speaker 4: Looking back to take the position that this case cannot
Speaker 4: return to New York at all, and that the defend
Speaker 4: that the Ecuadorian plaintiffs should simply default entirely and not
Speaker 4: do absolutely anything and completely protest the return of this
Speaker 4: case to New York. If I had it to do
Speaker 4: over again, that's probably the card that I would play.
Speaker 4: It would have been better for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs to
Speaker 4: be able to say in other countries, as a matter
Speaker 4: of principle, we should not have been required to present
Speaker 4: any evidence in New York after New York had already
Speaker 4: told us to go home, and to bring us back
Speaker 4: to do anything is completely illegitimate and completely wrong, and
Speaker 4: we will not.
Speaker 3: Participate in it.
Speaker 4: I think if I had it to do over, I
Speaker 4: would advise my client to do that, to completely protest
Speaker 4: the trial. And and that's it. And unfortunately Stephen didn't
Speaker 4: have that option because Stephen lives in New York and
Speaker 4: he's subject to the jurisdiction of the court and he
Speaker 4: has to defend the case. But my clients did have
Speaker 4: that option, and that was not a card we chose
Speaker 4: to play.
Speaker 1: According to Donziger's lawyer in the Rico case, the Little Page,
Speaker 1: Judge Kaplan focused on two key issues in the case,
Speaker 1: the Cabrera report and the allegation that the judgment itself
Speaker 1: had been ghostwritten.
Speaker 5: It was very clear Judge Kaplin was really focused on
Speaker 5: the bribery, and so a lot of a lot of
Speaker 5: the stuff that had happened in the underlying case, and
Speaker 5: a lot of the disquiet that the tribesmen had about
Speaker 5: the way Chevron had handled the case and some of
Speaker 5: the sort of dirty tricks Chevron had played in Ecuador
Speaker 5: with the underlying case was not allowed into evidence. We
Speaker 5: were not allowed to explore any of those prior issues.
Speaker 5: And Judge Caplin's ruling was it was just wasn't relevant.
Speaker 5: He was really focused on some very specific incidents and
Speaker 5: that's all he wanted to talk about, and he would
Speaker 5: not allow any evidence of anything else. The other thing
Speaker 5: that Judge Kaplan was really sort of focused on, was
Speaker 5: had the plaintiff's team cross the line with that court
Speaker 5: expert and been sort of too interfering, helped him actually
Speaker 5: create his report, helped him put together the exhibits to
Speaker 5: his report, none of which is prohibited under Ecuador law.
Speaker 1: We've covered the Cabrera report at length, but the bribery
Speaker 1: little pages referring to there brings us back to the
Speaker 1: Gerra story. We heard last time from Chevron's attorney Randy
Speaker 1: Mastro that Ghera had been part of the conspiracy with
Speaker 1: Donziger and the Ecuadorians and then flipped on the Lago
Speaker 1: Agrio plaintiffs testifying against them. Here's Mastro again.
Speaker 7: There were actually multiple witnesses in Ecuador and in the
Speaker 7: United States who'd been working with the plaintiffs team who
Speaker 7: flipped during the case. I'm a former federal prosecutor and
Speaker 7: I don't use that term lightly. They were part of
Speaker 7: the conspiracy, or they refused to be a part of
Speaker 7: the conspiracy, and they later gave testimony against Donziger and
Speaker 7: his allies about the conspiracy that they were perpetrating.
Speaker 6: Alpert Toquera wasn't.
Speaker 7: The only one, and he gave very powerful testimony at
Speaker 7: the trial, and he ended its testimony by saying, I
Speaker 7: know I did bad things. In words or substance, he said,
Speaker 7: I know I did bad things. I regret that I
Speaker 7: did bad things, but I'm telling the truth today.
Speaker 1: But Gara's testimony changed in a couple of instances, and
Speaker 1: the story took some wild turns. We asked Little Page
Speaker 1: to walk us through it.
Speaker 5: Well, it was shocking, you know, we knew coming in
Speaker 5: that Chevron had gone and recruited and paid cash in
Speaker 5: a Duffel bag to a judge who had been essentially
Speaker 5: disbarred in Ecuador for corruption and fraud. And you know,
Speaker 5: as an American lawyer, I just assumed that that sort
Speaker 5: of what sounded like a story like a movie plot
Speaker 5: would completely laughed out of an American courtroom. That we
Speaker 5: would have a key witness in a trial be someone
Speaker 5: that Chevron had paid close to a million dollars too
Speaker 5: in either money or compensation or you know, they bought
Speaker 5: him a house, they gave him a job, they bought
Speaker 5: him cars, they paid his flights for him and his
Speaker 5: family to move out of Ecuador, they paid for the
Speaker 5: immigration lawyer to bring him here. They you know, and
Speaker 5: it all started with Chevron showing up to a sketchy
Speaker 5: meeting with this former disbarred judge with a duffel bag
Speaker 5: full of cash, and the idea that what this judge
Speaker 5: would say would hold any weight in an American courtroom
Speaker 5: was laughable. When I got first got involved, I mean,
Speaker 5: I thought, okay, this is a joke, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: we are not allowed to play to pay fact witnesses.
Speaker 5: That's the rules. You cannot pay a fact witness just
Speaker 5: for this reason, because we're not supposed to influence the
Speaker 5: facts of a case. And yet Chevron had paid a
Speaker 5: fact witness and not just paid him fifteen thousand dollars
Speaker 5: in a duffel bag the first time they met, but
Speaker 5: then paid him another ten thousand, and then would.
Speaker 3: Give him bonuses of cash. If he came forward with
Speaker 3: more and more.
Speaker 5: Supposed facts that he had just remembered, he would get
Speaker 5: a bull everything he had just remembered.
Speaker 3: So that was an incredible concept.
Speaker 1: Gumez was also blown away by this.
Speaker 4: Given what Gara was allowed to testify about, and given
Speaker 4: the fact that the court chose to believe some aspects
Speaker 4: of his testimony and disregard other aspects of his testimony.
Speaker 4: I don't know that another witness would have made the
Speaker 4: difference if the court's willing to cherry pick testimony like that,
Speaker 4: and you know, the court had reasons to do it,
Speaker 4: and the court has every prerogative to do it. Judges
Speaker 4: do that all the time. What Judge Kaplin did about
Speaker 4: deciding to believe some of Gara, some of what Garat
Speaker 4: said and what some of what Gara did not happens
Speaker 4: all the time in court. I particularly don't think it
Speaker 4: should have happened here, given you know that he was
Speaker 4: getting paid twelve thousand dollars a month. But you know
Speaker 4: that's my opinion.
Speaker 1: Little Page says it was clear from investigations of Gara
Speaker 1: and his leader testimony that he was regularly adding more
Speaker 1: supposed evidence to his story to get more money out
Speaker 1: of Chevron. Transcripts of his testimony back this up.
Speaker 5: The first time he met with Chevron, Judge Ghara had,
Speaker 5: first of all, with every conversation with Chevron, it was
Speaker 5: always about how much money Gara could get, always, so
Speaker 5: every conversation, and they were recording these conversations, we were
Speaker 5: actually able to see them. You could see in his
Speaker 5: conversations that he was every single time. It was how
Speaker 5: much am I going to get? But just listen to
Speaker 5: the evolution of the story. I mean the first time
Speaker 5: he met, the first time he sort of concocted this
Speaker 5: story of bribery.
Speaker 3: He said very specific facts.
Speaker 5: He said he met Judge Sembrano at the Keito airport,
Speaker 5: because Judge Ghara lived in Quito, not in the Frontira,
Speaker 5: not where the actual case was happening. So he said
Speaker 5: Sombrano had been at the Keto airport. He went to
Speaker 5: the Quito airport. Judge Sombrano handed him the draft verdict
Speaker 5: on a flash drive, and his understanding was this flash
Speaker 5: drive was coming from the plaintiffs lawyers, from Stephen Donzinger
Speaker 5: and the other Ecuadorian lawyers. He took that flash drive
Speaker 5: home to his house in Quito, where he put it
Speaker 5: into his home computer. He never spoke to Judge Sombrano
Speaker 5: at all that whole weekend, and he retyped the verdict
Speaker 5: so it would sound like an Ecuadorian judge had written it.
Speaker 5: He put it back on the jump drive. He went
Speaker 5: back to the airport and he handed it to Judge Sombranno. Okay,
Speaker 5: so a very specific recollection well, Chevron then said, great,
Speaker 5: we'll pay you to come and buy your ten year
Speaker 5: old computer from your house, and we will find the
Speaker 5: draft verdict on there because you worked on it and
Speaker 5: you saved it back to this jump drive and it's
Speaker 5: going to be there and that's going to be our proof.
Speaker 3: And of course he sold off his.
Speaker 5: Multi year old computer to them and they put a
Speaker 5: forensic team on it, and there was absolutely no evidence
Speaker 5: of the verdict being on Judge Gara's home computer none.
Speaker 5: So then they bought from him every jump drive he
Speaker 5: could find, every jump drive in his house, and they
Speaker 5: found no evidence of the verdict.
Speaker 3: So when they came back to him and said, you know, look,
Speaker 3: this is kind of disappointing.
Speaker 5: We don't have any support for what you've been telling us,
Speaker 5: he said, oh no, now I remember, ah, I went
Speaker 5: by bus all the way to Lago Agrim. I actually,
Speaker 5: now remember I got on a bus and I drove
Speaker 5: hour after hour after hour all the way to Lago Agriam.
Speaker 5: When I got there, I went to Judge Sombrano's apartment
Speaker 5: and I stayed with.
Speaker 3: Him over the weekend.
Speaker 5: Now, the first story said he never sold so Brono
Speaker 5: over the weekend here now he's staying at Judge Sombrano's house.
Speaker 5: He worked on it on a laptop that Judge Sombrano
Speaker 5: gave him that he believed belonged to one of the
Speaker 5: Ecuadorian plain his lawyers, and that's why he couldn't produce it.
Speaker 3: Because it wasn't his, it belonged to someone else. He
Speaker 3: didn't put it on a jump drive. He worked on
Speaker 3: it on the computer. He left it on the computer.
Speaker 5: He had dinner together with Judge Sombrano in the evenings,
Speaker 5: and that's how.
Speaker 3: The verdict came about.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, those stories are so completely different that
Speaker 5: that witness under any rule of law would have zero credibility,
Speaker 5: I mean just zero credibility. And even more amazing, there
Speaker 5: had been an article in the Quito newspaper about a
Speaker 5: judge being busted for having a plaintive's lawyer give him
Speaker 5: a proposed verdict on a jump drive that he then
Speaker 5: put into his computer, changed a couple of the words
Speaker 5: and printed it anditied it.
Speaker 3: As his own. And the jump drive had been found.
Speaker 5: So here we have a man that we know right
Speaker 5: in the news about verdicts on jump drives came to
Speaker 5: Chevron with a story about working on this verdict on
Speaker 5: a jump drive that Judge Sombrano gave him at the
Speaker 5: airport in Quito, and when he could support none of that,
Speaker 5: he made up a whole new story about traveling by
Speaker 5: bus across the country into the Frontierra to Lago Agria
Speaker 5: to live at Judge Sombrano's house while he typed up
Speaker 5: this verdict on a different computer.
Speaker 3: Completely. So it was so comical.
Speaker 5: I mean, when I first got into the case, Rick
Speaker 5: Friedman had asked me if I would handle Judge Ghira,
Speaker 5: the cross examination of Judge Gehra and that sort of
Speaker 5: whole timeline. And when I started reading it and I saw,
Speaker 5: you know, Chevron was recording their conversations with Judge Gira,
Speaker 5: and he would say things like how much gold do
Speaker 5: you have for me?
Speaker 3: The best story brings the best gold.
Speaker 5: Just incredible things on these tapes, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 5: this is a right. I mean, no American court would
Speaker 5: allow this person to even come testify. I mean, they
Speaker 5: are the epitome of perjuring witness. And then the amount
Speaker 5: of money that had been paid to this fact witness
Speaker 5: was so absurd, and yet none of that counted.
Speaker 1: It's true. Ultimately none of it counted. Judge Kaplan ruled
Speaker 1: against Donzenger and the Ecuadorians throughout the case and eventually
Speaker 1: did find them guilty of fraud. His ruling barred them
Speaker 1: from collecting the Ecuadorian judgment in the US. That verdict
Speaker 1: came down in twenty fourteen. But that wasn't the end
Speaker 1: of this story either. Next time on Drilled.
Speaker 10: And Gerta and Carmen gave kind of like a warning
Speaker 10: about what they had gone through. You know that it's
Speaker 10: like to come to pass once again now that this
Speaker 10: RICO precedent has been set, And indeed that's what happened.
Speaker 10: Energy Chancer Partners put that case against Greenpeace, against stand
Speaker 10: dot Earth, against several water protectors, and we can see
Speaker 10: so many many cases in which RICO law has morphed
Speaker 10: from its original intention of targeting the mafia and white
Speaker 10: collar criminals to silencing protests to chin to quel particular
Speaker 10: forms of political organizing.
Speaker 1: Drilled is an original production of the Critical Frequency podcast Network.
Speaker 1: The show was created, reported, and written by me Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: My co reporter this season is Karen Savage. Our editor
Speaker 1: is Julia Ritchie. The show's editorial consultant is Rika Murphy.
Speaker 1: Mixing and mastering by Mark Bush, original score by b Beeman,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Dan Yan. Our artwork for this season
Speaker 1: was done by the super talented Matt Fleming. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Trevor Gowan and Emily Gertz. If you are a
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.