Chevron Faces More Scrutiny in Ecuador over Pollution

[Judi Lynn]

Chevron Faces More Scrutiny in Ecuador over Pollution
Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Mar 15 (IPS) - Leaders of indigenous communities in Ecuador are pressing their government to investigate senior executives from U.S. oil giant Chevron for an alleged environmental fraud scheme in the mid-1990s related to a long-running six-billion dollar class action suit in the South American nation.

But the U.S. oil giant vehemently denies the accusations and says it has already been absolved by the local authorities.
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The alleged operation involved bulldozing soil and organic debris on top of waste pits rather than cleaning them of poisonous toxins in the 1990s. The letter asserts that both lawyers oversaw this shoddy remediation. Later, Chevron tried to use the action as a defence in various lawsuits arising out of the ecological disaster in Ecuador.

"The crux of the argument is that there was a deliberate effort on the part of Texaco at the time to misrepresent the evidence on the quality of the clean-up and to mislead the Ecuadorian government into thinking a proper remediation has been carried out," said Kevin Koenig of Amazon Watch, a U.S. environmental organisation that is supporting the indigenous people.
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