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 Development Bank signed on the same day has an identical clause. China has also tried to secure its loans by pushing for a massive expansion of Ecuador’s oil frontier, especially in the central-south Amazon and Yasuní National Park, before and after the Yasuní-ITT Initiative failed. The Yasuní-ITT Initiative was the proposal by the government of Ecuador to refrain indefinitely from exploiting the oil reserves of the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil field in the Yasuní National Park, in exchange for half of the value of the reserves, or $3.6 billion over 13 years from the international community. The aim of the initiative