Opinion

Chevron’s landmark lawsuit exposes ‘greenmail’

In a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, one of the highest-profile environmental campaigns of recent decades is about to be exposed as nothing more than a fraud and extortion racket — “greenmail.”

Chevron is suing lawyer Steven Donziger and a number of activist environmental groups in a civil-racketeering suit, claiming that his landmark $19 billion award against the oil company in an Ecuadorean court was the product of a criminal conspiracy.

Ironically, much of the company’s evidence comes from footage shot for “Crude,” an award-winning pro-Donziger documentary that premiered with much publicity at the Sundance Film Festival.

In an eight-year suit in Ecuador, Donziger and his environmentalist allies argued that the oil company had wantonly polluted the pristine Ecuadorean rainforest, creating vast areas of poisoned land and causing huge spikes in cancer and other diseases.

The case drew vast media coverage, with pieces in The New York Times, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker; a sympathetic “60 Minutes” piece featured the poor and sickly Ecuadorean peasants. And celebrities like Daryl Hannah embarked on some cancer tourism, hugging natives before taking her Chevron-powered jet back to Hollywood.

An Ecuadorean court found Chevron responsible for massive pollution and awarded the rainforest communities (and lawyers) $19 billion. It was hailed as one of the most significant environmental victories in decades.

Guilty or not, corporations often pay such settlements so they can move on with business. But Chevron decided to fight back — and it seems to have uncovered a massive green extortion plot.

Chevron got a court order for more than 500 hours of footage from “Crude” that never made it into the documentary.

They show Donziger full of contempt for the country he says he cares about, openly boasting about how corrupt Ecuador’s judicial system is and planning to intimidate the judge because “the only language . . . this judge is going to understand is one of pressure, intimidation and humiliation.”

The filmmaker even recorded the lawyers lamenting that no pollution had spread from the original drilling sites and “right now all the reports are saying . . . nothing has spread anywhere at all” and how this lack of pollution was a serious problem.

But the footage also shows Don­ziger figuring he can brazen it out: “If we take our existing evidence on groundwater contamination, extrapolate based on nothing other than our . . . theory . . . then we can do it. And we can get money for it.”

There’s more.

Chevron will produce evidence that Don­ziger forged the signature of American experts on reports claiming widespread pollution — when these same experts had actually filed reports finding no such thing.

And that Donziger and his associates paid the Ecuadorean court’s “independent” expert more than a quarter of a million dollars so they could ghost-write his findings — the report that recommended the massive damages.

Chevron even promises to show that Donziger offered a judge on the case a $500,000 bribe to swing the judgment.

Chevron is arguing that Don­ziger and his environmental allies are no better than the mafia extorting money out of the company based on threats and fraud.

The stakes are huge: If Chevron loses, its bottom line and reputation will be seriously damaged. If Donziger loses, he misses out on a possible $3 billion payday and could be disbarred.

But the real losers are the 30,000 Ecuadorean natives that Don­ziger claims to represent.

These are some of the poorest people on the planet, who’ve been told to expect a huge damage award. Worse, an eight-year campaign was waged to convince them that they’re suffering mysterious illnesses, including cancer.

These people deserve to know the truth about their land and their health. Maybe now, in a New York courtroom, they are going to get it.

Phelim McAleer is a journalist and filmmaker. His documentary “FrackNation” looks at the myths and exaggerations surrounding environmental attacks on fracking.