Post by rmarks1 on May 7, 2014 22:06:55 GMT -5
FORTUNE -- Patton Boggs has agreed to pay Chevron $15 million to settle a fraud charge the oil giant leveled against it, which stemmed from the law firm's role in an environmental suit against the oil giant in Lago Agrio, Ecuador, which culminated in a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron (CVX) in 2011.
Last March a Manhattan federal judge ruled that that judgment had been procured by fraud, bribery, and extortion, but he withheld judgment on whether Patton Boggs itself had engaged in any wrongdoing.
Under the terms of today's remarkable agreement, Patton Boggs also agreed to withdraw from any further representation of the plaintiffs, expressed "regret" for ever having gotten involved in the case, agreed to turn over its remaining stake and fee interests in the case to Chevron, and agreed to allow two of its partners to be deposed by Chevron regarding the plaintiffs' efforts to fund their litigation and to enforce the judgment in other countries. (The firm had originally taken the case on a partial contingency basis, and the agreement reveals that its stake in the judgment had grown to 5% -- or more than half a billion dollars.)...
The case referred to was Chevron's civil racketeering suit against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' lead strategist, New York lawyer Steven Donziger. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in March that Donziger had committed extortion, mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, money laundering, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in the course of winning the $9.5 billion judgment, and that the entire 188-page Ecuadorian judgment had been secretly ghostwritten by the plaintiffs team -- an accommodation achieved by its having promised the presiding judge $500,000 from any eventual recovery.
features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/05/07/patton-boggs-pays-chevron-15-million-to-settle-fraud-charges/
Last March a Manhattan federal judge ruled that that judgment had been procured by fraud, bribery, and extortion, but he withheld judgment on whether Patton Boggs itself had engaged in any wrongdoing.
Under the terms of today's remarkable agreement, Patton Boggs also agreed to withdraw from any further representation of the plaintiffs, expressed "regret" for ever having gotten involved in the case, agreed to turn over its remaining stake and fee interests in the case to Chevron, and agreed to allow two of its partners to be deposed by Chevron regarding the plaintiffs' efforts to fund their litigation and to enforce the judgment in other countries. (The firm had originally taken the case on a partial contingency basis, and the agreement reveals that its stake in the judgment had grown to 5% -- or more than half a billion dollars.)...
The case referred to was Chevron's civil racketeering suit against the Ecuadorian plaintiffs' lead strategist, New York lawyer Steven Donziger. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in March that Donziger had committed extortion, mail fraud, wire fraud, bribery, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, money laundering, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations in the course of winning the $9.5 billion judgment, and that the entire 188-page Ecuadorian judgment had been secretly ghostwritten by the plaintiffs team -- an accommodation achieved by its having promised the presiding judge $500,000 from any eventual recovery.
features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/05/07/patton-boggs-pays-chevron-15-million-to-settle-fraud-charges/
The environmental movement is a necessity to keep us from all living in a polluted world. Fraud like the above negates all the good work that has been done.
Bob