A U.S. federal court in New York has ordered Donziger, mastermind of the Ecuadorian racketeering and fraud scheme against Chevron Corp., to pay the company $813,603 for his share of court fees from his 2013 RICO trial.
In a 49-page opinion last week, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who presided over the RICO proceeding, reiterated that Donziger and his co-conspirators attempted to extort billions of dollars from Chevron through falsified evidence, bribery, coercion and the ghostwriting of a $19 billion court judgment against the company in Ecuador. The RICO ruling, which was unanimously affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, granted Chevron the right to recover the costs of the action.
Last Wednesday, the court rejected all Donziger s arguments for not paying as baseless or unsupported by evidence, adding he was not entitled to favorable court discretion due to his repeated and egregious misconduct and outrageous behavior throughout the case.
Ouch.