Chevron Runs from Judgment in Ecuador

Chevron Runs from Judgment
in Ecuador

by Greg Palast - Exclusive for Truth-out.org

Chevron petroleum Corporation is attempting to slither out of an $8 billion judgment rendered yesterday by a trial court in Ecuador for cancer deaths, illnesses and destruction caused by its Texaco unit.

I've been there, in Ecuador.

I met the victims.  They didn't lose their shrimp boats; they lost their kids.  Emergildo Criollo, Chief of the Cofan Natives of the Amazon, told me about his three-year-old.  "He went swimming, then began vomiting blood." Then he died.

And then I met Chevron-Texaco's lawyers.

When I showed Texaco lawyer Rodrigo Perez the epidemiological studies tracing childhood cancers to their oil,  he sneered and said , "And it’s the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States, in Europe, in Quito? If there is somebody with cancer there, [the Cofan parents] must prove [the deaths were] caused by crude or by the petroleum industry. And, second, they have to prove that it is OUR crude – which is absolutely impossible."

The Texaco man stated, "Scientifically, nobody has proved that crude causes cancer."

President Barack Obama has said that the British-based BP must pay for all the damage it caused in the Gulf.

I've just returned from the Gulf and I can tell you, it's grim, it's terrible.  But compared to the damage caused by Chevron-Texaco, the Gulf blow-out is a picnic.

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