Corruption in Ecuador accused Ecuador of violating the due process of 27 Supreme Court justices dismissed by Congress in 2004. In 2015, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) stated that “judicial independence is seriously compromised” in Ecuador. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in 2014 that an $18 billion pollution judgment against Chevron by an Ecuadoran court in 2011 had been the product of corruption. Attorney Steven Donziger and his legal team, according to Kaplan, had “used bribery, fraud and extortion” to win the case for his clients, a group of Ecuadoran villagers. Evidence showed that the ruling issued by Ecuadoran judge Nicolas Zambrano
Oil shale in Serbia sapropel type (Aleksinac, Mionica and Petnica) and sapropel-coaly type. Although oil shale was known in Serbia for centuries, a more detailed exploration started in 1980s. The Southern Serbia region, covering an area equal to around 30% of the country and containing oil shales of Upper Devonian to Lower Carboniferous age, was extensively studied during the 1980s, while the smaller deposits in the other parts of the country were found to be of negligible economic value. Within the region, two potentially exploitable large deposits, Aleksinac and Vina-Zubetin, have been identified, estimated to contain 2 and 0.85 billion tonnes of oil shale