In the United States today, it is easy to hear rhetoric about a handful of corporations controlling the nation — and for good reason, too. Corporatocracy is defined by Oxford Dictionaries as “a society or a system that is controlled by corporations.” In the US, ten corporations control almost all of the food brands, another 10 make up most of the clothing market, six control the media market, 10 control the pharmaceutical industry, and six control the petroleum industry. When so much power in our consumer economy becomes concentrated in the hands of so few, it leads to a situation where corporations can exert outsized power over our lives.
Few examples of this are more stunning than the recent successful prosecution — or persecution, to some — of attorney Steven Donziger. Donziger, a human rights attorney from New York City, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991 and soon after took up a case that would consume the next thirty years of his life.
Back in the 1970s, Texaco and Petroecuador, two petroleum companies, drilled for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. The two businesses destroyed the rainforest, leaving billions of gallons of oil waste in the Amazon, creating an area known as the “Amazon Chernobyl.” The indigenous peoples of this area have been, and continue to be, harmed by the effects of this waste. Tens of thousands of Ecuadorians were afflicted with cancer and other waste-induced diseases and deformities.
In 1993, Donziger and other attorneys visited Ecuador. Shortly thereafter, they filed a class-action lawsuit against Texaco. They brought this lawsuit on behalf of more than 30,000 farmers and indigenous people from the affected area. By 2001, Chevron had bought Texaco and requested the case be moved from New York to Ecuador. This was part of a legal strategy by Chevron, who believed that Ecuadorian courts would deliver a more favorable ruling for the company.
The case wound its way through the Ecuadorian court system, dragging out until 2011 when a provincial judge in Ecuador found Chevron guilty and awarded the plaintiffs a whopping $18 billion in damages. Ecuador’s highest court later affirmed this ruling, though they reduced the damages to $9.5 billion — still a great win.
Of course, Chevron wanted to play dirty. Namely, they moved all of their assets out of Ecuador to ensure that the judgment could not be enforced. Donziger and his fellow attorneys attempted to have the judgment enforced in nations where Chevron had assets, including Canada, Argentina, and Brazil. Despite the fact that the courts of these respective nations agreed with Donziger that Chevron had committed a grave injustice in the Amazon, it was not legally possible for these nations to enforce the judgment.
Chevron then went on the offensive, and this is where they made their most significant mistake. Chevron filed a RICO lawsuit against Donziger, and only Donziger, in which they accused him of bribing an Ecuadorian judge and ghostwriting the judgment against Chevron. They demanded $60 billion in damages from Donziger. Curiously, though, just before the trial began, Chevron dropped its monetary demands, thereby allowing the judge in the case to dismiss the jury and make the ruling himself.
Chevron then benefited from the judge assigned to the case, Judge Lewis Kaplan of New York, a former lawyer who worked with Brown & Williamson Tobacco — the company known for Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, and Capri cigarettes. Kaplan’s past implicitly makes him a corporate-friendly judge, meaning Donziger clearly faced an uphill battle.
The case’s only witness was the judge that Donziger allegedly bribed. During the trial, Judge Alberto Guerra testified that he had received $250,000 from Donziger and that Donziger had ghost-written the judgment Guerra ultimately brought against Chevron. Crucially, Kaplan cited this testimony as the main evidence for Donziger’s guilt in the case.
This case should be a slam-dunk then, right? That has not been so, though, because of some crucial details. First, it’s rather suspicious that Chevron paid for immigration lawyers to help Guerra and his family emigrate from Ecuador and provided him with a monthly “salary” of $12,000 for “housing and living expenses.” Indeed, the most damning piece of evidence came out after the trial. Guerra admitted to having rehearsed his testimony with Chevron lawyers 53 times prior to the trial. Guerra testified to an international tribunal later that he had lied and changed his story multiple times during the trial. This means, contrary to Chevron’s claims, no bribe and no ghostwriting ever occurred.
Judge Kaplan refused to consider this new evidence that would clearly exonerate Donziger, and he ordered Donziger to pay Chevron $800,000 in damages. Donziger appealed, and as part of the process, Judge Kaplan ordered him to surrender his computer, phones, and electronics to Chevron to be searched for assets. Donziger refused, arguing that it would violate attorney-client privilege because of the sensitive information on his devices. Judge Kaplan then charged Donziger with criminal contempt for these actions. The Southern District Court of New York declined to prosecute, so Judge Kaplan took the “rare” step of appointing a private law firm — a firm which previously had represented Chevron — to prosecute Donziger. In doing so, this case became a private prosecution.
Kaplan then hand-selected the judge who would preside over the contempt trial — a Chevron-linked judge named Loretta Preska. Donziger was deemed a flight risk, he was placed on house arrest for more than two years, and eventually he was found guilty of contempt and sentenced to the maximum sentence of six months in prison.
Donziger is the subject of a corporate-sponsored persecution. Although he was released in December 2021 to serve the rest of his term in home confinement, he will remain deprived of his liberty until Monday, April 25, 2022. To add insult to injury, Chevron seized all of his assets and he finds himself in a financially precarious situation. The treatment Donziger continues to undergo is incredibly wrong; it is morally, legally, and ethically wrong.
Unfortunately, not enough is being done to call out Chevron’s evils. Few mainstream outlets have reported on the case in its entirety, and the ones that have, have done a disservice to the case. For example, a New York Times article from November 2021 conveniently ignored the fact that Judge Guerra recanted his testimony.
Fortunately, Donziger has become something of a martyr among grassroots activists, a twist that Chevron likely did not anticipate. Now, the #FreeDonziger movement has a following with momentum. Amnesty International and the United Nations both urged the immediate release of Donziger. Mr. Donziger has nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter and he has publications like Jacobin and The Nation churning out articles about his case daily. All of this serves to keep the pressure on Chevron without allowing his case to fall out of the spotlight.
In the United States, it is abhorrent that such a blatantly corrupt series of events could unfold. Yet, it is an important reminder of how fragile our democracy is. As corporate power continues to strip away the last semblances of democracy and justice from our lives, the institutions that “guarantee” us our freedom, rights, and due process will no longer be reliable. If a corporation can successfully persecute Donziger, they can do it to anyone. The faint light of American democracy is waning as the power of the American corporatocracy burns brightly in its grotesque glory.
Image by Luis Ramirez is licensed under the Unsplash License.
