An Ecuadorian judge has denied allegations that he participated in a shakedown by issuing a sham $19 billion environmental judgment against Chevron Corp.
On April 4, the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, who are simultaneously fighting Chevron’s fraud claims in New York and seeking to enforce their judgment against the company worldwide, filed a declaration from former Ecuadorian provincial judge Nicolas Zambrano. Zambrano denied Chevron’s claims that the judgment he issued in 2011 was ghostwritten by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, asserting that he was "the only author." And he attacked his former judicial colleague, Alberto Guerra, for suggesting in a Jan. 28 declaration that the judgment was a product of bribery by the plaintiffs. Instead, Zambrano attested, it was Guerra who kept dangling bribery offers from Chevron.
