Steven Donziger, by Luis Grañena.
Steven R. Donziger (Florida, 1961) defines himself as a “political-corporate prisoner”.
"My house arrest is political and is moved by Chevron," he explains by phone from his apartment in Manhattan, where an electronic anklet has been geolocating his movements for almost two years.
In short, this robust man of more than five feet and trained at Harvard, where he met Barack Obama, could be jailed.
There is no way to understand his bizarre case without first understanding the complex legal process that Chevron has faced with indigenous people and Ecuadorian peasants for 27 years. Thousands of residents of the Amazon have suffered for half a century the disastrous effects of pollution caused by oil extraction in the jungle. That pollution, the victims alleged, occurred for decades by Texaco (bought by Chevron in 2001) and its partner, the national hydrocarbon company. In 1993, when toxic water and waste had already contaminated land and rivers vital to local communities, Dozinger (who spoke Spanish because he had lived and worked as a journalist in Nicaragua) filed a civil action against Texaco in New York with other lawyers. . The cause did not prosper,but Donziger and the victims took the litigation to Ecuador in 2003. In what is known as the Lago Agrio trial, Donziger did not practice as a lawyer, but as a communicator and
lobbyist
. Its objective: to sensitize the world public opinion and to obtain financing for the millionaire costs of a judicial battle that was announced long. It was a new paradigm in the fight for socio-environmental justice, Donziger says: "Indigenous peoples of the Amazon worked as a team with Harvard graduates, international donors and members of sophisticated investment funds." He served as a point of union between all.
In 2011, Chevron - which by buying Texaco had inherited its liabilities - was sentenced by an Ecuadorian court to pay 19,000 million dollars. Subsequently, higher courts in the country reduced the amount to 9.5 billion, but confirmed the sentence, which is final. For its part, Chevron went to the Hague arbitration court in 2018 claiming that the sentence had been obtained “through fraud, bribery and corruption” and thus questioning the impartiality of the Ecuadorian justice system. It obtained a favorable ruling that, although it did not disqualify what was dictated in the Andean country, it did stain the case. Donziger describes that victory in the Ecuadorian courts as a historical fact and, at the same time, the origin of the "attacks" against him. “Chevron is not only trying not to pay the people who polluted in Ecuador;he is trying to eradicate the idea that a case like this can be reproduced ”.
In parallel to the litigation in Ecuador, in 2011 Chevron decided to open another judicial front, this time against Donziger and in the US. Ironically, it was Dozinger himself who provided him with ammunition. To publicize the case, he had promoted the documentary
Crude
, premiered in 2009 at Sundance, in which he was portrayed as a man obsessed with controlling the message, who mounted media circuses to the judge in the case and insulted Chevron's lawyers. His outbursts could have come to nothing if it were not for the fact that the oil company - which last year had a turnover of 94,000 million dollars - counterattacked through an elite law firm, which found a vein in the documentary. Based on several controversial scenes and citing suspicions of wrongdoing, they got a judge in New York to order the director to hand over 600 hours of footage to see if there was evidence that Donziger and the Ecuadorian lawyers had broken the law to obtain a favorable ruling. In the footage, the judge found evidence of fraud and forced Donziger to reveal years of communications tied to the case.It was a total disclosure: His notes, emails and documents showed that he had pressured scientists to exaggerate environmental reports and that he had secretly met with judges on the case. One of the Ecuadorian magistrates declared in New York, where he had been taken by Chevron, that the plaintiffs had offered him half a million dollars to write the sentence. That judge later declined, but the damage had already been done: the Lago Agrio case was diminished by an alleged fraud and Donzinger was disqualified last year.that the plaintiffs had offered him half a million dollars to write the judgment. That judge later declined, but the damage had already been done: the Lago Agrio case was diminished by an alleged fraud and Donzinger was disqualified last year.that the plaintiffs had offered him half a million dollars to write the judgment. That judge later declined, but the damage had already been done: the Lago Agrio case was diminished by an alleged fraud and Donzinger was disqualified last year.
If you want to support the development of news like this, subscribe to EL PAÍS
Subscribe
Pablo Fajardo, the Ecuadorian lawyer who won the case and is now fighting for Chevron to pay the sentence in a country where it has assets, denies irregularities, but admits that Donziger, with whom he worked for years, made mistakes. "He helped Chevron divert media attention by being a useful fool," he says. "It had too long a tongue, but now it is a victim of the American system of injustice." He's not the only one who thinks about it. Amnesty International, several Nobel laureates and actors such as Susan Sarandon (who has visited him several times to publicize the case) denounce the violation of his right to a fair trial. His supporters question the impartiality of the judges holding him under house arrest and his ties to Chevron. He is not optimistic. "The next logical step would be to put me in jail," he says.Meanwhile, in the Ecuadorian jungle, victims continue to cry out for justice.
Subscribe here
to the weekly Ideas newsletter.