MANHATTAN (CN) - Chevron adopted a strategy to "destroy the reputation" of the Ecuadorean government and judiciary after realizing a court there would hold it liable for massive oil contamination in the Amazon, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said today in an interview at the Pierre Hotel.
"When Chevron realized that it couldn't control our government, it started this campaign against Ecuador and our government," Correa said, just in New York after back-to-back speaking engagements at Harvard and Yale.
"Before, the Ecuadorean government supported Chevron," the president continued, his breezy charm a marked contrast to the fiery public persona. "Now, they are claiming that the judiciary system is not independent because they couldn't interfere with the government, or with the legal process."
Chevron inherited the lawsuit, initially filed 21 years ago in New York by indigeneous and campesino residents of the Ecuadorean rainforest, when it acquired Texaco, which had for decades drilled in the Amazon alongside the state-owned Petroecuador.
It was Chevron that brought the case to Ecuador, only to return to Manhattan in recent years with a lawsuit calling the country's judiciary corrupt.
Just weeks later, on Feb. 14, 2011, a judge in Lago Agrio held Chevron liable to the tune of $19 billion. That figure was later cut in half.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan last month blocked the collection of the verdict, which he said was "procured by corrupt means."
As part of a two-week series on the heels of that ruling, Courthouse News watched as Correa condemned Kaplan's ruling before an audience of roughly 5,000 of his citizens in Tiseleo Canton.
That first public response to the decision complained of "lies," "bias" and "imperialism," but Correa adopted a more conciliatory view of U.S. justice in general while speaking one-on-one in New York today.
"I admire a lot of the judiciary system of the United States," said Correa, who earned his master's degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois. "I lived here for years. I know the judiciary system. I continue to admire this judiciary system in spite of Judge Kaplan."
Two full sections of Kaplan's lengthy opinion dealt with what he called Correa's "influence" over the case in Lago Agrio, named after the "Sour Lake" headquarters of Chevron's predecessor, Texaco.
Picking up on that finding, Chevron spokesman Morgan Crinklaw said, "While Correa and his subordinates like to claim they have had no involvement in the case, the facts prove otherwise."
Correa countered that the New York ruling contained "a lot of untrue facts and a lot of inaccurate information."
"It's incredible," he added.
For example, Kaplan mistakenly wrote that Correa had tried to pressure a settlement by tapping a "college roommate" to prosecute two of Chevron's lawyers, the president said.
"Washington Pesantez was not my fellow [room]mate," Correa said, referring to Ecuador's prosecutor general at the time.
Chevron's attorneys stood accused of submitting false information about the cleanup of the rainforest a decade earlier, but Ecuador ultimately dropped its criminal case against the lawyers.
Correa emphasized that he did not - and could not - have appointed Pesantez because only Ecuador's National Assembly has the power to make such a nomination.