Indigenous Groups Win Right to Seize Chevron’s Canadian Assets over $18 Billion in Amazon Pollution [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/20/indigenous_groups_win_right_to_seize

Indigenous Groups Win Right to Seize Chevron’s Canadian Assets over $18 Billion in Amazon Pollution
Friday, December 20, 2013

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to major developments in the landmark lawsuit filed by a group of Ecuadorean farmers and fishermen against Chevron, the world’s third-largest oil company. In 2011, an Ecuadorean court found Chevron liable for nearly three decades of soil and water pollution near oil wells, and said it had ruined the health and livelihoods of people living in nearby areas of the Amazon rainforest. Since then, the victims have been trying to collect some $18 billion in environmental damages.

AMY GOODMAN: But Chevron has vowed never to comply with the judgment. In a case now before a federal court in New York, Chevron argues the main American lawyer in the case, Steve Donziger, won the verdict after he engaged in judicial coercion, fabrication of evidence, and bribery. The court is expected to rule in the coming months. Han Shan, working with the victims, spoke as Ecuadorean villagers and their supporters rallied across from the courthouse in New York in October.

HAN SHAN: Nearly every single person who’s been named as a defendant in Chevron’s retaliatory RICO suit has loved ones, has family members who have died, who have contracted cancer, who have suffered from birth defects and other oil-related illness due to Chevron’s contamination. This lawsuit essentially rubs salt in their wounds.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, as victims of Chevron fight this case in the United States, they’ve also tried to move forward on collecting damages from the company in Canada. Now the courts there have given the green light for the rainforest residents to attempt to seize Chevron’s Canadian assets.