Members of the appellate panel in Ecuador that affirmed the $18 billion judgment against Chevron for contaminating the Amazon rainforest were clearly outraged at the oil giant’s abuse of the judicial process even as it denied a request by the rainforest communities to increase the amount of damages, a reading of an unofficial translation of the decision reveals.

The judges also found ample scientific basis to uphold the damages award — including devastating evidence provided the court by Chevron’s own team of technical experts that proved levels of pollution hundreds of times higher than permitted by law. But citing a lack of evidence, the panel also rejected efforts by the indigenous communities to seek additional damages for the loss of their ancestral lands and for the spreading of oil on the dirt roads of the region.

Chevron has a right to appeal to Ecuador’s National Court of Justice (NCJ) in Quito, but might first be required to post a bond, said Pablo Fajardo, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs. The right to appeal to the NCJ — the nation’s highest judicial authority — will not kick in until the appellate panel has a chance to respond to requests by the parties for clarification, which must be submitted by the end of this week.

The case was heard in Ecuador at the request of Chevron, which fought for almost a decade to shift the venue away from the U.S. federal court where it was originally filed in 1993.

“This decision confirms what we have been saying for years,” said Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian lawyer. ”Chevron is guilty of extraordinary greed and criminal misconduct that has created a humanitarian crisis in Ecuador that puts thousands of people at risk.

“Whether people live or die depends largely on whether Chevron meets its responsibility to remediate a problem it created,” Fajardo added. ”Chevron broke the rainforest. It now must fix it.”

In a 16-page single-spaced decision, the three Ecuador judges noted that Chevron had “staged incidents that encumbered the process of the trial” and that it dumped 20,000 pages of largely redundant evidence on the appellate court to delay consideration of the case. The plaintiffs have long accused Chevron of trying to undermine the trial by filing frivolous motions and trying to intimidate judges.

Among the key findings by the panel, which reviewed the voluminous trial record of 220,000 pages for 11 months:

In response to Chevron’s complaints that it was “denied justice” in Ecuador, the appellate court noted on the second page of its decision that the only filings from the oil giant that were denied were those that were “abusive” and “clearly designed to obstruct the administration of justice.” For example, Chevron once filed 18 similar motions in the trial court in a 30-minute period, and tried to have the judge removed when he did not rule on them fast enough.

The court found that Chevron’s requests for proof that it needed to defend itself — including the tedious task of conducting 36 judicial inspections of the company’s former well sites — were “processed without exception.” It found that “hundreds of thousands of documents submitted by Chevron bloated the trial record with everything it considered relevant.”

Referencing Article 283 of Ecuador’s civil code, and citing a long list of examples of Chevron’s malfeasance during the trial, the appellate panel upheld a decision that Chevron should pay the costs of the plaintiffs due to the “flagrant bad faith it exhibited in the case.”

The panel wrote:  “Chevron was condemned to pay trial costs for manifest bad faith… so much so that now suffice it to say that the procedural conduct of the defendant, few times seen in the annals of the administration of justice in Ecuador, were abusive to the point that… the Court will not even dedicate any more writings to this portion of the decision.”

The panel also criticized Chevron for continuing to challenge the jurisdiction of Ecuador’s courts, even though the oil giant voluntarily agreed to litigate the case in Ecuador to induce a U.S. federal judge to shift the venue to the South American country.

“From the [initial hearing] up to the present appeal, it can be said that … Chevron has failed to recognize the authority, jurisdiction, and competence of Ecuadorian courts,” the panel wrote on page 15 of its decision.

The court also noted on page 11 of its decision that laboratory results confirmed that pollution existed at former Chevron well sites hundreds of times higher than permissible norms in Ecuador, which themselves are considered relatively lax by international standards.

The panel also noted many of the scientific results that proved the case against Chevron were submitted to the court by Chevron’s own technical experts.

Pierre-Jean Durieu / Shutterstock.com

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The past week, the first Campus Party was conducted in Quito, Ecuador in the Cemexpo expo center. The event lasted five days starting the 19th of October and lasting until the 23rd, there were more than 2000 people in attendance. Known as the major technology, leisure, and digital culture event of the world, Campus Party has gathered a lot of success and popularity among the people.

In previous years, the event has been carried out in several countries such as: Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. The origin of this event comes way back in 1997, starting  in Mollina, Malaga.

The main mission and values of the event is to focus on a general and informative character, which reunites diverse platforms and collectives of the informatics world, in order to encourage the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Public and private institutions formed part of the event’s audience.

The areas of focuses are: innovation, creativity, science and digital leisure. Which highlight the main principle that is based on the human factor and says: Internet is not a computer network, Internet is a people network”. Being the first time that the event happened in Quito, it was well received with the participation of two thousand participants.

Conferences, workshops and competitions were carried out. It counted with the presence of International and National experts such as Neil Harbisson, Eduardo Arcos and Andreu Vea. The velocity in which the participants could surf on the internet was something to behold.

Movistar’s representative Dagmar Thiel, explains that among the total 3GB that were available to perform different tasks and exercises only 1.8 GB were utilized, which means that the participants did not encounter any limitations in regards of surfing and sharing contents.

The closure of the event lead to the awards of the contestants who faced several challenges created and planned by different companies. The majority of the challenges focused on awakening the creativity of technology fans, in order to obtain solutions to problems that are being faced daily.

The following are some of the winners of the different contests:

The first Challenge was named 2020 Quito, which consisted in generating a Facebook Page, try to gather as many followers as possible and find answers to the question: How do you project Quito to look within 9 years? The winner, Israel Mena (24) created a Facebook page named “The future Quito”, and within one week he was able to gathered 1300 followers.

Another challenge consisted on finding a way of transmitting values of the city, and how do we want the city to become and look like. Fernando de Sucre won the contest by creating a jingle which emphasized the city’s values, and to do so he used technology to create and mix the different components of the song such as sounds, melody and lyrics.

Juan Regalado, a student of the National Polytechnic School won the Iron Geek Award. It consisted of an application to filter information in social networks. He won a flight to the upcoming Campus Party in Brazil and a three month internship in Movistar.

Many companies sponsored and supported the event such as: Movistar, Quito Metropolitan District, Ecuador’s Central Bank, Microsoft, Raptor, Sharp, Direct TV, Telefónica, and many other.

Besides offering lectures and activities, it is important to note that about 2,000 people were baptized digitally. Therefore, children, parents and students who had never had access to a computer, were trained and approached to the digital world

Video: 

http://blog.campus-party.com.ec/resumen-final-cpquito-2011

Image Courtesy of    http://www.facebook.com/CampusParty

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Last night, Quito welcomed the Spanish Singer Enrique Iglesias, who started his tour “Euphoria”.

The concert began Yesterday 30^th of June, at 20:00 P.M local time, in the Capital of Ecuador, Quito at the Rumiñahui Coliseum.

The Romanian DJ Edward Maya, winner of a Billboard opened the concert. Spicing up the atmosphere with some electronic dance music.

Enrique entered the stage and his words of wisdom for his audience were: “Quito…Tonight I’m fuc%&$ you”.

The singer performed an amazing show, accompanied with incredible music, dances and even some kisses. He sang the new songs from his recent album Euphoria. Which is the number 9th album that he recorded. The album was released on July 5th of 2010, and it features many artists such as:  Akon, Usher, Juan Luis Guerra, Pitbull, Nicole Scherzinger, Wisin and Yandel and Ludacris.

He brought on stage a lucky girl from the audience. But the things begin to turn a bit hot when he started singing to her the song, “Hero”. To heat things a little bit, and give the audience something to talk about. He begin to sing to the girl in a sensually manner, and kissed her on the mouth.

There have been already previous concerts, where he has already kissed a fan. But every time he makes sure his shows keep rising the degrees and makes things CALIENTES!

The tickets cost $35  (General) $75 (V.I.P) and $130 (Blackbox)

The tour will keep going until the end of October.

The upcoming concerts throughout South and Central America are:

• La Paz, Bolivia: July 2, 2011
• Santa Cruz, Bolivia, July 5, 2011
• 3.Caracas, Venezuela, July 7, 2011
• 4.Tegucigalpa, Honduras, July 9, 2011

Then the Artist will head up to Australia:

• 5. July 23, Sydney Aus
• 6. July 25 Brisbane, Aus
• 7. July 27 Melbourne, Aus
• 8. July 28, Melbourne, Victoria, Aus

And to end things up he will head to U.S.A, where in most of the concerts Pitbull will be the special guest.

• Starting September 22nd in Boston
• September 23, Philadelphia, pa
• September 24, Newark, NJ
• September 27, Washington, DC
• September 29 Toronto
• September 30 Detroit
• October 1 Chicago
• October 3 Kansas City
• October 6, Los Angeles
• October 7, San Jose
• October 8, Las Vegas
• October 12, Houston
• October 13, San Antonio
• October 15 El Paso
• October 16 Laredo
• October 18, Dallas
• October 20 Atlanta
• October 21 Orlando

The last day of the tour, will be the 22nd of October in Miami Florida.

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On Tuesday, the fifth of April, the Ecuadorian Government announced the expulsion of the United States ambassador Heather Hodges. The government expressed that the ambassador was not an unwelcome person. This action was taken by consequence of a confidential diplomatic leak, from Wikileaks, and was published by the newspaper El Pais. The leak contained information about the corruption present in Ecuador, mainly in the Police ground.

In a press conference, the foreign minister Ricardo Patiño said: “ We have asked that she abandons the country as soon as she can. Regarding the relationship with United States, he also claimed: “ There is no way, that we would intend to affect the relationship with United States”. In response United States has classified the issue as “unjustified”.

Mr. Patiño called Mrs. Hodges to her office, in order to ask some explanations about the diplomatic leak that was exposed in the media. The ambassador in response, said that the documents had been stolen, and that neither her nor her Government would make any comments about it. The minister explained that once said that she was not a welcome person in the country, it is directed to a functionary who did a leak of this nature and then she resign to give any other explanation about the them”.

Mr. Patiño, also assured that Ecuador would not proceed to contact its ambassador in Washington, because its reaction has is not linked at all towards the American Government, but it’s linked against the leaks that had been signed by the ambassador.”

The leaked material had been released in 2009. Whereas the United States embassy in Quito affirmed that “ the corruption is generalized in the rows of the Ecuadorian Police”. The leaked document exposed the information about a policeman named Jaime Hurtado Vaca, whom resigned his charge on May of the same year. The document contained information about how the referred policeman had utilized his status by being the main authority in his congregation. He recurred to extortionate, accumulated money, facilitated the traffic of people and protected other corrupted agents as well.

Also, the document exposed “ that some of the functionaries of the United States embassy thought that the President Rafael Correa, was conscious about the corrupt activities. Some observers concerned about the issue, believed that Correa took advantage of this situation in order to have a Chief policeman whom could be easily manipulated”.

Mr. Patiño affirmed: “It is absolutely unacceptable, our Government cannot accept this kind of information that has been released by the ambassador of United States in our country.”

On the other hand, the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, had accused United States of spying the country’s policeman. In an interview that was retransmitted by more than ten radio stations, he affirmed that the relationship among both countries “were the best”, he remarked that it was a “pity” about how this things can be done, spying the police, and trying to involucrate the President of the Republic in corruption cases. He classified Mrs. Hodges as “ bad functionary” that he “had never liked” to his executive. And added, that “ he wished that this doesn’t damage the relationship among United States and Ecuador, because if it does, what a shame, but here we will make the sovereignty of the country be respected”.

Grasping also the other side point of view, a spokesman from the Whitehouse declared, “ The ambassador Hodges is one of our most experimented and talented diplomatic. The State department considers her expulsion as unjustified and we are deeply sorry that the Ecuadorian Government proceeded to do so ”.

The American ambassador from her side said that the decision of Correa’s executive has left her “ tremendously sad”.” I hope I can have another opportunity, maybe, to answer questions”. She added that she did not count with enough time to prepare an adequate response regarding the question about the leaking material from Wikileaks, and that before she make any declarations about the issue, she has to consult Washington.

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