A corporate watchdog group on Friday named Chevron the most irresponsible company, but critics say there is more than just bias going on.
“At the gates of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Berne Declaration and Greenpeace Switzerland have bestowed upon Chevron the ‘Lifetime Award’ for being the most irresponsible corporation in the ten-year era of the Public Eye Awards,” Public Eye announced in a press release.
“The US oil giant received the largest number of the neigh-on 64,000 online votes, followed by Glencore and Walmart,” Public Eye noted.
“For fifteen years, the Public Eye has cast a critical and innovative eye on the World Economic Forum,” Public Eye concluded. “Ten times it has presented the annual award of shame to a corporation with a particularly abysmal record in terms of human rights or the environment.”
Public Eye cited the environmental incident in Northern Ecuador as a primary reason for giving the award to Chevron. Paul Paz from the U.S.-based nominating organization, Amazon Watch, was particularly outraged about the incident.
“Chevron’s refusal to comply with the 2013 verdict which ordered the company to pay U.S. $9.5 billion in damages and clean up costs,” Paz said at the ceremony.
However, critics have argued that the awards are a sham and are meant to hurt the reputation of certain companies, as opposed to actually bringing awareness to immoral corporations.
According to sources for The Daily Caller News Foundation, Amazon Watch has a direct connection to Steven Donziger, the man who accused Chevron in court of being responsible for the environmental incident in Northern Ecuador.
In an outtake from the movie, “Crude,” Amazon Watch’s executive director, Atossa Soltani, admitted to hiring a private army to intimidate judges in Ecuador. This eventually led to Chevron winning a seven week-long RICO and fraud trial in the United States just last year against Donziger and several of his associates, including Amazon Watch.
Chevron was able to prove that Donziger presented fraudulent evidence at the trail. This included false environmental evidence, pressuring scientific experts to falsify reports, plotting to intimidate judges into handing down favorable rulings, bribing court-appointed experts, ghostwriting court reports and even drafting the final judgment.
In March 2014, the U.S. federal court ruled that the $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in Ecuador was the product of fraud and racketeering activity.
Judge Lewis Kaplan stated in the court ruling, “The wrongful actions of Donziger and his Ecuadorian legal team would be offensive to the laws of any nation that aspires to the rule of law, including Ecuador – and they knew it. Indeed, one Ecuadorian legal team member, in a moment of panicky candor, admitted that if documents exposing just part of what they had done were to come to light, ‘apart from destroying the proceeding, all of us, your attorneys, might go to jail.’ It is time to face the facts.”
A spokesperson for Chevron told TheDCNF, “It is unfortunate that organizations that claim to stand for human rights and transparency are lending support to behavior that has been condemned by international human rights experts.”
“This is nothing more than a stunt to distract attention from the fact that the lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador has been proven to be meritless and the product of unprecedented fraud,” the spokesperson continued. “A United States court has found that the lawyers behind this case violated federal racketeering laws, committing mail and wire fraud, money laundering, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.”
TheDCNF could not reach Public Eye for further comment.
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