"Steven Donziger Is Finally Free. Onward Toward Justice for the People of Ecuador!", 26 April 2022

...[H]uman rights lawyer Steven Donziger woke up free, marking the closure of the latest chapter in Chevron’s scheme to evade justice for contaminating the Amazon rainforest....

...Chevron, formerly Texaco, is responsible for deliberately dumping at least 16 billion gallons of toxic oil waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1964-1992 while it was the sole operator of oil fields there, creating an environmental disaster and causing decades of cancer and reproductive harm. Since then, Chevron has used its money and political influence to escape accountability...

Now, Steven Donziger is finally free of home detention after serving more than two and a half years in confinement for a petty misdemeanor contempt of court charge, which carries a maximum sentence of six months. Donziger was the victim of what’s been called the “first corporate criminal prosecution” in the United States...

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined Donziger’s detention to be a violation of his human rights...

In Ecuador, this case exemplifies the level of impunity enjoyed by U.S. corporations, and specifically oil companies, and the complete lack of respect they have for the lives of Indigenous people and frontline communities where they carry out their operations. In the U.S., this case exposes the staggering level of corruption and control the fossil fuel industry has over U.S. courts and government agencies (as well as its effective intimidation of corporate media)...