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
China–Ecuador relations of between 6% and 8%, and demand payment in barrels of crude oil. In 2013, Chinese money helped cover as much as 61% of the government’s financing needs. In exchange, China has claimed nearly 90% of the country’s oil shipments over the next few years, most of which it then trades around the world and especially in the United States A new credit line is under negotiation since mid 2014, which would be in addition to $9 billion in financing that Ecuador is seeking from China for the construction of a refinery that will process 200,000 barrels of crude oil