No plunder for pirates

Last week, the wind was almost entirely taken from the sails of an Ecuadorian legal pirate ship that turned up in Canadian waters several years ago, looking to loot energy giant Chevron Corp.’s Canadian subsidiary.

As in the great days of buccaneering, however, we have to remember that one man’s pirate is another man’s freedom fighter cum state representative, and this voyage was backed to the hilt by Ecuador’s socialist president, Rafael Correa (who reluctantly leaves office this year, having failed to rig his country’s constitution). It was also supported by radical environmentalists, trade unions, left-wing politicians, and a raft of Hollywood’s B-list.

The captain of the ship was a mercenary American lawyer named Steve Donziger, who imagined that he had hit the jackpot when an Ecuadorian court ordered California-based Chevron to pay US$18.5 billion (subsequently reduced to a mere US$9.5 billion, plus interest) for alleged crimes against the environment and humanity. These revolved around pollution caused by Texaco, which Chevron acquired in 2001, when Texaco was operating in Ecuador more than 25 years ago.

A rather fundamental legal problem for taking the case to civilized jurisdictions was that Donziger’s band of buccaneers had — among other crimes and misdemeanours — bribed the Ecuadorian judge and ghostwritten his decision.

In 2014, a U.S. federal court found that the judgment had been the product of fraud and racketeering, including extortion, money laundering, wire fraud, witness tampering and obstruction of justice, a list of which Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow would have been proud. That damning decision was unanimously affirmed last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which found Donziger’s crew guilty of a “parade of corrupt actions.”

The first U.S. federal court decision had also prohibited the Ecuadorian judgment from being enforced in the U.S., but Donziger had already set sail for what he hoped would be more amenable judicial waters. Thus the Jolly Roger appeared off Toronto.