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
Alicia Cawiya the Ecuadorian Amazon region between 1964 and 1992. During this period, Texaco drilled 339 wells in 15 petroleum fields and 627 toxic wastewater pits were abandoned, as well as other elements of the oil infrastructure. It is now known that obsolete and highly polluting technologies were used as a way to reduce economic expenses. After the company left the country, the government started legal actions to be compensated by the company, which tried to avoid the sentence of paying a fee of 19.000 million dollars. This conflict lasted for more than twenty years and in June 2017 the United States