Overview
In the RICO litigation Chevron has brought to challenge an allegedly fraudulent multibillion dollar judgment against it in Ecuador, the defendants today moved to strike the testimony of an Ecuadorian judge who admitted to taking bribes from Chevron’s adversaries in the prior litigation in Ecuador. Chevron paid the judge to be relocated to the U.S., and the defendants argue that the payments were unlawful bribes:
For two days last week, the federal courthouse was blighted as Chevron used it as a stage for this man’s objectively corrupt testimony, in which he admitted to offering and accepting between 20 and 40 bribes throughout his career as a lawyer and judge—once accepting as little as $200 to “fix” a case. Now, Guerra wants this Court to believe that the hundreds of thousands of dollars Chevron has paid or promised to pay him are something other than yet another bribe. The Court should not allow this farcical witness to further taint these proceedings. Defendants expect that Chevron will advocate “punting” this issue by suggesting that the Court may simply assign Guerra’s testimony little or no weight in the end. That would be an insufficient remedy under these circumstances. Litigants must understand that our legal system cannot be debased in this manner, and that supremely wealthy parties cannot get away with buying testimony by labeling their payments otherwise.Prior posts on the case are here.
