MOSCOW (MRC) -- US supermajor Chevron appealed on Monday to Ecuador's highest court, asking it to cancel a USD9.5 billion fine for polluting the Amazon rainforest in a long-running case, reported Upstreamonline.
Last month Ecuador's National Court of Justice upheld a 2011 verdict by a lower court that Chevron was responsible for pollution in the area caused by US oil firm Texaco, whose assets were bought by Chevron in 2001.
Chevron says that 2011 ruling was obtained by fraud and it is pursuing a case in New York against the US lawyer representing the plaintiffs who it says resorted to corruption to win what it calls an "illegitimate" verdict.
Villagers in the remote jungle region say the pollution has harmed their health. Chevron says Texaco cleaned up the area before handing it to Ecuador's state oil company, Petroecuador, which Chevron says bears the responsibility.
The judge in the 2011 ruling ordered Chevron to pay USD9.5 billion, plus an additional USD9.5 billion for refusing to publicly apologise for the pollution. The National Court of Justice halved the fine last month, saying there had been no legal basis to sanction Chevron for not apologising.
Earlier this month, an Ontario appeals court ruled that a group of Ecuadoreans can seek enforcement in Canada of the judgement against Chevron, overturning a lower court decision from earlier in the year.
The plaintiffs traveled to Canada to target what they say are Chevron's USD15 billion worth of assets in that country. The California-based company no longer has any assets in Ecuador.
We remind that, as MRC informed earlier, this november, Chevron, as expected, finally signed on the dotted line for its USD10 billion deal with Ukraine for the Olesska shale production sharing agreement.
MRC