Former Ecuador judge on Chevron case says plaintiffs bribed court [View all]

[Zorro]

A former Ecuadorean judge has claimed that after stepping down from the bench, he illegally ghostwrote a judgment in which Chevron was ordered to pay $18.2 billion (11.5 billion pounds) for polluting the rain forest, and that the plaintiffs paid a $500,000 bribe to the judge who issued the ruling.

Alberto Guerra, who presided over the case from 2003 to 2004, made the allegations in a sworn statement filed by Chevron on Monday in support of a lawsuit in Manhattan federal district court accusing the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and their lawyers of fraud.

"Another participant in the fraud has now come forward rather than wait to be exposed by others," Hewitt Pate, Chevron vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

Karen Hinton, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs, in a statement called Guerra a "disgraced former Ecuadorean judge who is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Chevron to make false allegations about the Ecuador trial court judgment."

More at: http://news.yahoo.com/former-ecuador-judge-chevron-case-says-plaintiffs-bribed-025841619--finance.html