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An Argentine judge embargoed Chevron Corp.'s assets in Argentina to carry out an Ecuadorean court order that awarded $19 billion to plaintiffs in an environmental damage lawsuit in the Amazon, a lawyer said Wednesday.
Judge Adrian Elcuj Miranda ordered the freezing of Chevron's assets in Argentina as plaintiffs try to collect the judgment won in Ecuador last year, Argentine lawyer Enrique Bruchou told reporters in a conference call.
The order states that all the cash flows from sales and bank deposits be frozen until the $19 billion is collected, Bruchou said. The order applies to 100 percent of Chevron's capital stock in Argentina, 100 percent of its dividends and its entire minority stake in Oleoductos del Valle. It also includes 40 percent of any current or future money that Chevron Argentina holds as well as 40 percent of all its crude sales.
Bruchou said the decision in the largest environmental suit in the world should send a strong message to foreign investors that they must apply the same environmental standards wherever they do business. Similar lawsuits have been filed this year in Canada and Brazil.
"We're making history in the preservation of the environment," Bruchou said.
"This is a ruling that sets an example. What we're telling the world is that in Latin America we want to demand that whoever comes to exploit does it following the same health and environmental standards as they do in their countries of origin," he said.
Chevron officials said the company knew of neither a filing by the plaintiffs nor an order from a court in Argentina. They also said Chevron's operations in Argentina had nothing to do with the case in Ecuador.
"The plaintiffs' lawyers have no legal right to embargo subsidiary assets in Argentina and should not be allowed to disrupt Argentina's pursuit of its important energy resources," said James Craig, a Chevron spokesman for Latin America and Africa. "The Ecuador judgment is a product of bribery, fraud, and it is illegitimate."
Chevron has refused to pay the sum stemming from waste water pollution and oil industry waste, saying that fraud marked the trial and that Texaco Petroleum Co. mitigated the environmental damage long before 2001, when it became a Chevron subsidiary.
Ecuador's highest court has upheld the ruling, while the plaintiffs have accused Chevron of dirty tricks designed to subvert the lower-court ruling.
