The case relied in large part on the testimony of Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorean judge whom Chevron had moved to the United States from Ecuador in 2013 for safety reasons. Chevron paid for immigration lawyers for Guerra and his family and provided him with a monthly salary of $12,000 for housing and living expenses.
[39] In the RICO trial, Guerra alleged that Donziger had arranged for him to ghostwrite the verdict that was delivered against Chevron in Ecuador. Guerra stated that the judge who heard the case signed the verdict which Guerra had prepared and the two shared payment of $500,000 from the plaintiffs, led by Donziger. In Kaplan's conclusion to the RICO case, he highlighted this as primary evidence for the racketeering charge.
In his judgment, Kaplan wrote that "Guerra on many occasions has acted deceitfully and broken the law ... but that does not necessarily mean that it should be disregarded wholesale". He found that the "evidence leads to one conclusion: Guerra told the truth regarding the bribe and the essential fact as to who wrote the Judgment."
[39] In 2015, Guerra testified to an international tribunal that he had lied and changed his story multiple times in the RICO trial. Guerra admitted that there was no evidence supporting the allegation that Donziger bribed him or paid him for delivering a ghostwritten judgment, and that large parts of Guerra's testimony in the RICO case were either exaggerated or untrue.
[39] Kaplan also ordered Donziger to pay Chevron $800,000 on the RICO claim and barred Donziger from selling shares in the Ecuadorian judgment to investors.
[40]
techcrunch.com
