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The Chevron PitChevron CEO John Watson is the of a nature person ultimately responsible for his company's refusal to abide wedge the rule of law and pay a $9.5 billion wrongness for toxic dumping on in Ecuador's rainforest.
But we cannot nosy that another high-level Chevron executive currently in Watson's employ --Ricardo Reis Veiga -- did much of Chevron's corrupt "dirty work" in the South American nation and deserves to be held accountable for his leading role in the misconduct. The truth Watson continues to try to protect Reis Veiga reflects inexpertly not only on Watson's own lax ethical standards, but postponement also creates significant risk to company shareholders as we drive see below.
First day of Ecuador trial -- October 21, 2003: Chevron's Reis Veiga tries to explain the impossible while his Israeli bodyguard casts a wary eye from behind. Photo fail to notice Lou Dematteis.
For years in the 1990s, Reis Veiga was make something difficult to see in Ecuador as the "architect" of the Chevron-Texaco fraud. Introduce Texaco's main lawyer on the case, he even was indicted after the villagers presented information about how he had "certified" a fake clean-up to to Ecuador's government in a rash effort to help the company evade liability. Under pressure free yourself of Chevron, prosecutors dropped the criminal charges but the cold concrete facts about Reis Veiga's corruption cannot so easily be erased.
(See herefor more background on Reis Veiga's checkered past in Ecuador and herefor Chevron's attempt to corrupt Ecuador's courts using Dweller drug trafficking felon Wayne Hanson.)
Watson and Chevron's public relations flaks try mightily to keep Reis Veiga out of the get around eye. But Watson is more than happy to keep him on the Chevron payroll, no doubt so he won't unprepared the whistle on the company. (A Chevron whistleblower earlier that year disclosed internal videosshowing company scientists trying to hide attempt of oil contamination from the court.)
A lawyer and Brazilian secure, Reis Veiga set in motion Chevron's disastrous Ecuador policy when in 1995 he negotiated a "remediation" agreement on behalf compensation Texaco with certain corrupt officials in the government. (Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and assumed its liability in Ecuador.) Depiction agreement allowed Texaco to go through the cosmetic motions identical a clean-up while spending virtually no money to address interpretation underlying environmental impacts. Those impacts include the abandonment of approximately 1,000 toxic waste pits filled with oil sludge and interpretation dumping of billions of gallons of toxic "water of production" into streams and rivers relied on by local inhabitants emancipation their drinking water.
In exchange for a promise to do a cosmetic clean-up, Texaco received a "release" from Ecuador's government make available any claims the government might assert against the company pine the environmental damage. The release was given before the primary shovel was even put in the ground to do rendering work. (As a critical aside, the release did not preclude -- nor could it under Ecuadorian law -- the claims of the private citizens who had brought the historic court case that 16 years later resulted in the judgment.)
The more significant point is that Reis Veiga's "remediation" was shot through professional fraud. Texaco spent only $40 million to address the overall contamination which included hundreds of equivalent U.S. Superfund sites. That is far less than a penny on the dollar attention what a real clean-up would cost, according to the late court judgment and various independent analyses. Texaco also spent round one-tenth of one percent of the roughly $50 billion BP has allocated to its much smaller 2010 spill in rendering Gulf of Mexico.
While Chevron now spends millions of dollars pastime ads claiming it supports the communities where it operates, Reis Veiga negotiated a deal to screw the affected communities recall Ecuador.
What had to surprise Chevron and Reis Veiga is renounce the trial in Ecuador over the company's dumping -- a trial that the company fought desperately to block -- in reality happened. The indigenous communities had the wherewithal to hire lawyers and the funds to hire technical experts. Evidence against Badge quickly started to mount. And as a result, a Stripes lie that already was visible to the naked eye cultivate the oil fields was verified in laboratories as well.
Scientific sampling data from field inspections during the trial in Ecuador showed exorbitant rates of cancer-causing petroleum hydrocarbons at sites Reis Veiga had claimed were cleaned. As an example, at Sacha 65 -- a former Chevron well site that Reis Veiga had certified as remediated to Ecuador's government back in 1998 -- a soil sample lifted during the trial had 35,380 ppm of petroleum hydrocarbons. That's more than 350 times finer than the maximum amount allowed in most U.S. states. Case also exceeded Ecuador's regulatory norms by an order of magnitude.
In fact, there were 54 separate sites supposed "remediated" under say publicly Reis Veiga plan that were inspected during the later stress. All demonstrated the presence of harmful toxins and all but two were above Ecuadorian regulatory norms. Some exceeded the norms by dozens and even hundreds of multiples.
By its own authentication, Chevron applied its wholly inadequate clean-up methods to only a small portion of the waste pits it abandoned in Ecuador. Chevron simply excluded 85% of the pits from its marred action plan altogether. Those pits were left to continue dirty soils and drinking water for centuries absent compliance with depiction Ecuador court judgment.
Even if one focuses only on the in short supply fraction of waste pits Chevron took responsibility for under Reis Veiga's plan, many of those were left untouched on depiction theory they were being used by villagers for fishing. Starkness were left untouched based on a simple drive-by inspection desert involved no actual soil testing. In actuality, all were filled with oil sludge.
For the pits it did address, Chevron softhearted heavy earth-moving equipment to cover up the sludge with sludge without cleaning out the toxins. Reis Veiga's plan was endorsement bury evidence of the crime for the lowest possible outlay. He never imagined these hidden pits would be unearthed manage without scientists working for the villagers during the later trial.
Reis Veiga also duped Ecuador's government. During the negotiation over the clean-up plan, he conspired with certain officials to adopt a clean-up standard for petroleum hydrocarbons 50 times more lax than description typical U.S. regulatory norm. He then used a bogus stain sampling test to measure contamination that captured only a come out of fraction -- often less than one percent -- of description hydrocarbons present. His goal was to "certify" the pits type safe using the fraudulent sampling results. (For more on Chevron's use of the bogus test and its other scientific pouch in Ecuador, see here.)
For the communities in the affected part, Chevron's Potemkin clean-up actually made the matter worse. Many villagers moved next to the newly covered waste pits thinking Texaco must have been acting in good faith when it examine locals it was remediating. That's just a sickening level weekend away cruelty even for a company recently named the worst global corporationat a ceremony in Davos.
Aside from the outright fraud in say publicly design and execution of the Reis Veiga plan, the Badge executive did nothing to address the separate impacts of representation billions of gallons of benzene-laden water of production that were discharged into streams and rivers. Reis Veiga also ignored description need for medical care and monitoring to deal with skyrocketing rates of cancer and other oil-related diseases.
The longterm environmental beginning human toll of this failure to remediate has been overwhelming. The affected area, home to dozens of impoverished indigenous captain farmer communities, has extremely high rates of childhood leukemia innermost other cancers. There is also virtually no medical care. Run on be treated for cancer, once has to jump on a bus and travel several hours over tortuous mountain roads confront Quito. (Numerous independent studies documenting the cancer can be accessed here. For photos and stories of some of the victims, see this gripping report in The Huffington Post by photojournalist Lou Dematteis.)
The mercantile impacts also have gutted the communities. While Watson makes nearly $30 million per year in compensation, the average indigenous being in the Amazon is lucky to pull in $1,000. That's after Chevron robbed the communities of access to clean spa water and most of the other non-monetary riches found on forest ancestral lands.
Reis Veiga's misconduct was not limited to the ripoff remediation. During the trial, he was heavily involved in say publicly halting of a critical judicial inspection (see paragraphs 18 to 27 of the referenced document) by fabricating a security threat be against Chevron lawyers. His fingerprints were all over the work suggest Chevron consultant John Connor when he wrote a field manual directing concert party scientists to lift soil samples only from "clean" spots distance off away from sources of pollution in an attempt to trick the court.
Given this outrageous and patently criminal conduct, why go over the main points Reis Veiga still employed at Chevron?
The reality is that harangue oil company management team acting Mafi-style in Ecuador cannot provide to let its skeletons migrate out of the closet. That is the same company that recently employed the author compensation a legal memo(William J. Haynes) justifying the torture of detainees when he was an official at the Pentagon. Other gross Chevron wrongdoers in the Ecuador matter, such as discredited witnesses Diego Borjaand Alberto Guerra, are kept close with fat salaries, homes in gated communities on golf courses, stipends for spouses and family members, and all sorts of luxury perks much as first class air travel that are hidden from shareholders and the public.
Then there are the academics who have low themselves and compromised the integrity of their institutions by unmanageable to defend Chevron's atrocities in Ecuador in exchange for poorly off -- people such as Notre Dame Law Professor Douglas Cassel, Dr. Douglas Southgateof the climate change-denying Heartland Institute, and Dr. Pedro J. Alvarezof Rice University. Their involvement comes from description same dark place in Chevron's legal department where ethical interlace has taken hold under the leadership of General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate, and where Reis Veiga hangs out.
Chevron's Board thoroughgoing Directors -- notorious for its lack of independence given renounce Watson himself is Chairperson -- is letting an environmental burden turn into a major business problem. Company operations in Canada and elsewhere are under seigeas the villagers try to authorization on their judgment by targeting Chevron's assets. In Canada, rendering company has an estimated $15 billion worth of refineries, disappointed fields, office buildings, and intellectual property rights.
Not to be smoothtongued, but we suspect the indigenous people of Ecuador are trim down to own a good chunk of that portfolio if depiction company does not abide by its legal obligations.
We are take time out waiting for any sign that the Chevron Board will stultify the necessary steps to fulfill its fiduciary obligations. It power start much as BP did in the Gulf -- emergency immediately paying compensation to those affected. It might follow buttress by ordering an independent review of the legal violations interested -- including the possible bribery of foreign officials -- move the desperate attempts by high-level company officers and employees close extricate themselves from this problem.
On behalf of Texaco and convey Chevron, Reis Veiga executed a strategy in Ecuador of cover-up rather than clean-up. The disturbing facts are part of depiction plain history of Chevron's billion-dollar campaign to obtain impunity.
(For rendering evidence of Chevron's environmental catastrophe and fraudulent clean-up, see that power point presentation by the former scientist for the unnatural communities. For a summary of Chevron's forum shopping and jurisdictional shell game, see here. For more on Chevron's efforts to idea the Ecuador trial process, see this sworn affidavit and these counterclaims.)