Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Ecuador: Odebrecht stoolie turns in tapes of meetings with officials

José Santos, Odebrecht’s top officer in Ecuador, has turned in to investigators videos of his meetings with government officials, according to Veja.

In exchange, he received the shortest sentence of all seventy-seven of the company’s informants.

Seventy-seven singing: Big enough for a symphonic chorus.

Santos’s tapes must be music to the ears of the investigators of the bribes-for-government contracts case(s) against Odebrecht.

Karina Martín reports,

So far, investigations into the Odebrecht case in Ecuador have led to the imprisonment of eight people, among them an uncle of re-elected Vice President Jorge Glas and the former Minister of Electricity Alecksey Mosquera.

General Comptroller Carlos Polit, who is currently outside the country, has been involved, but due to his position, he reportedly enjoys judicial privilege.

Ecuador’s lead prosecutor Carlos Baca alleges that “60 percent of the corruption plot arrived and went through Panamanian ports.”

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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BREAKING: SCOTUS declines to hear Donziger appeal on Chevron case

The Supreme Court of the United States has declined to hear an appeal of the 2014 decision.

You can see it in today’s list under CERTIORARI DENIED, listed as docket #16-1178 DONZIGER, STEVEN, ET AL. V. CHEVRON CORPORATION..

As you may recall, in 2014 Judge Kaplan found that the  $9.5B Environmental Judgment Against Chevron ‘Obtained by Corrupt Means’

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan found that New York lawyer Steven Donziger and his litigation team engaged in coercion, bribery, money laundering and other criminal conduct in pursuit of the 2011 verdict.

Timeline from the WSJ:

Evolution of a Case

  • 1964: Texaco Petroleum Co. begins drilling for oil in Ecuador as part of a consortium
  • 1990: State-owned PetroEcuador takes over the consortium’s oil operations
  • 1992: Texaco ends operations in Ecuador
  • 1993: Ecuadorean residents sue Texaco in U.S. federal court over oil pollution
  • 1995: Texaco signs agreement with Ecuadorean government to clean up pollution
  • 1998: Texaco completes the cleanup
  • 2001: Chevron Corp. acquires Texaco
  • 2003: Ecuadorean residents sue Chevron in Ecuador court
  • 2011: Chevron sues Ecuadorean plaintiffs’ lawyer Steven Donziger in U.S. court
  • 2011: Ecuadorean court awards the plaintiffs about $18 billion in damages
  • 2013: National Court of Justice in Ecuador affirms verdict but reduces damages to $9.5 billion
  • March 2014: Chevron wins U.S. court case against Mr. Donziger.

You can read Judge Kaplan’s entire decision (500 pages) here.

Recommended:
Paul Barrett’s book, Law of the Jungle: The $19 Billion Legal Battle Over Oil in the Rain Forest and the Lawyer Who’d Stop at Nothing to Win

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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The Peru-Ecuador border wall

You probably didn’t know about this wall:
Peru has demanded that Ecuador stop construction work on a wall that its neighbor is building on the border between the two countries

The border has long been a source of tensions between the two Andean countries. Decades of tension descended into open military confrontation in 1995 which lasted three years before a peace agreement was signed.

The Peruvian government claims that the construction of the wall violates the terms of the agreement, in which the two countries agreed to leave a space of 10 meters on either side of the canal free from any building construction.

Ecuador has put aside $4.4 million for the four-meter-tall border wall construction, which is expected to be concluded in September. Local Ecuadorian official Manuel Zumba told AFP the barrier complies to all agreements and is supposed to fight contraband and won’t hinder movement of people as the wall construction is part of a project to regenerate the area, reviving trade and tourism.

Add some solar panels, and you got the art of the deal!

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Ecuador: Media fined for not carrying article

Four newspapers and three TV stations were fined US$3,750 each for not carrying a story on presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso.

Ecuador fines media for not publishing a story

Ecuador has fined seven media companies for not publishing a story that it deemed of public interest.

The state’s media watchdog said the press had a duty to cover a story about the supposed offshore dealings of opposition politician and recent presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso.

The investigation was published in an Argentine newspaper in March.

The watchdog and the media companies have accused each other of censorship. Appeals are under way.

The ruling was made against newspapers El Comercio, La Hora, Expreso and El Universo, and television channels Televicentro, Teleamazonas and Ecuavisa.
. . .

The report, “Lasso: the offshore tycoon”, was first published by Argentina’s left-wing Pagina 12 newspaper, and was picked up by various other Ecuadorean news outlets ahead of the country’s election on 2 April.

The Committee to Protect Journalists asserts that “No government anywhere, including in Ecuador, has any business telling the news media what to cover,” and reports,

In defending its actions before Supercom, lawyers for El Comercio argued that the original Página/12 story was poorly reported, failed to include a response from Lasso, and that publishing the unverified allegations would have violated an Ecuadoran law barring media from promoting or denigrating candidates immediately before elections.

Freedom House has rated Ecuador’s press status as “not free.”

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Ecuador: Partial recount results predictable

Predictably,

Following a recount of almost 1.3 million votes in Ecuador, the electoral council has confirmed left-wing candidate Lenín Moreno as the winner of the presidential poll held on 2 April.

The recount slightly boosted Mr Moreno’s margin over his conservative rival, Guillermo Lasso.

Mr Lasso had demanded a full recount citing allegations of fraud but the national electoral council only agreed to a recount of 10% of the votes.

Cue Capt. Louis,

Where’s the OAS?

But monitors from the Organization of American States said they considered “a recount of this magnitude and under these norms to be an exercise in transparency”.

More like an exercise in futility.

UPDATE:
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!



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John Batchelor: Ecuador & Argentina discard transparency.

Mary O’Grady was in the Batchelor show discussing how Ecuador & Argentina discard transparency.

Mr. Correa has been president since 2007. He runs the country’s largest media empire and controls the legislature, the judiciary, the top command of the army, and the national police. All members of the CNE have links to his government or his party, the PAIS Alliance. The head of the electoral appeals tribunal is the brother of Mr. Correa’s attorney general.

Mr. Moreno freely used government resources to campaign and played dirty. Fake Lasso ads in which he promised to privatize health care popped up on city buses, though Mr. Lasso had made no such proposal. With government control of more than 20 mass-media organizations, including television and radio stations, newspapers and magazines, Mr. Moreno blanketed the nation with his message. The government often interrupted programming on channels not owned by the state to run campaign spots.

The European Union observed Ecuador’s 2009 presidential election and issued a report critical of Mr. Correa’s use of government resources and power to influence the outcome. This time around the CNE blocked an EU observer mission.

Listen here:

Also don’t miss O’Grady’s column on Venezuela,

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Ecuador: Demonstrations on the street while Correa says left’s on the mend

The glass is half-full, and half-empty:

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa Sees Latin America’s Left on the Mend. ‘There are going to be a lot more triumphs for the left,’ departing leader says after his preferred candidate’s victory

President Rafael Correa has watched one after another of his leftist Latin American allies get impeached, beaten at the polls or excoriated as antidemocratic, as his own government faced growing disenchantment amid an economic downturn.

This week, he hailed a reversal in that trend as Ecuadoreans elected his preferred successor, former Vice President Lenin Moreno, in a tight race against a conservative rival. The outcome, he said, highlighted the left’s resilience at a moment when analysts see the region’s politics moving to the right.

“I think it marks an end to that change,” Mr. Correa said in an interview late Wednesday at the presidential palace. “We’ve won in very adverse conditions.”

while the demonstrators take to the streets and twitter,

“The people of Ecuador will NOT be fooled. We want democracy and freedom for all Ecuadorians asking for #RecountNOW”

The CNE says the results are “official and irreversible.”

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