Steven Robert Donziger was born on September 14,1961 and is an American attorney known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly Aguinda v Texaco, Inc and other cases in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous people who suffered environmental damage and health problems caused by oil drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field of Ecuador.
30 Facts About Steven Donziger
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Steven Donziger was placed under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan's RICO decision, when he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron's forensics experts.
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In July 2021, US District Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty, and Steven Donziger was sentenced to 6 months in jail in October 2021.
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In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the pre-trial detention imposed on Steven Donziger was illegal and called for his release.
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Steven Donziger took him to picket in support of Cesar Chavez's Salad Bowl strike.
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Steven Donziger studied history at American University where he wrote for his college newspaper.
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Steven Donziger founded Project Due Process which offered legal services to Cubans who arrived in the US in the Mariel boatlift.
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Steven Donziger graduated from law school in 1991 and worked as a public defender in Washington, DC In 1991, he visited Iraq as part of a mission that produced a report on the impact of bombing on civilians during the first Gulf War.
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Steven Donziger was the editor of The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission, published in 1996 by Harper Perennial.
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Steven Donziger was asked by Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia to help win compensation for the pollution and health effects caused by oil drilling in the Lago Agrio oil field, a region that became known as the "Amazon Chernobyl".
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Steven Donziger visited Ecuador in 1993, where he says he saw "what honestly looked like an apocalyptic disaster," including children walking barefoot down oil-covered roads and jungle lakes filled with oil.
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Steven Donziger said that "the indigenous people would never get a fair trial in Ecuador if they did not illuminate what had happened to them and get public support".
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Steven Donziger appeared in the 2009 documentary film Crude which explored a two-year period in the case.
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In 2014, Steven Donziger estimated that the legal fees Chevron was paying to appeal had already exceeded $2 billion.
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In 2014, Kaplan ruled that the judgment in Ecuador was invalid because Steven Donziger had achieved it through offenses against legal ethics, including racketeering, extortion, wire fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, judicial bribery, coercion, witness tampering, and arranging for expert's reports to be ghostwritten.
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Steven Donziger said that because Judge Kaplan failed to disclose that he held shares in three mutual funds which in turn held shares in Chevron at the time of the ruling, he should have recused himself.
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Guerra admitted that there was no evidence supporting the allegation that Steven Donziger bribed him or paid him for delivering a ghostwritten judgment, and that large parts of Guerra's testimony in the RICO case were either exaggerated or untrue.
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Kaplan ordered Steven Donziger to pay Chevron $800,000 on the RICO claim and barred Steven Donziger from selling shares in the Ecuadorian judgment to investors.
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The contempt charges allege that Steven Donziger failed to comply with Kaplan's orders to submit his electronic devices and passport and to drop attempts to collect on the award against Chevron.
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Steven Donziger was required to wear a GPS-equipped ankle bracelet.
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Preska ordered Steven Donziger to post a bail bond of $800,000, which is a record for a misdemeanor case in the US.
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The trial was rescheduled to begin on November 9, then delayed until January 2021 for Steven Donziger to have legal representation.
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Steven Donziger asked Preska to allow his criminal contempt trial to be livestreamed via Zoom because of restrictions on public attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic and significant public interest in the case.
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On July 26,2021, after almost two years of home detention, Steven Donziger was found guilty by Judge Preska on all six contempt charges.
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Preska said that Steven Donziger had not shown contrition and "It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law".
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On December 9,2021, Steven Donziger was released from prison to serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest per a pandemic-related early release program.
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On February 10,2022, Steven Donziger was forced to report to a halfway house after his ankle bracelet triggered an incident report, according to attorney Ron Kuby.
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In 2018, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal claimed that "Steven Donziger's attempted looting of Chevron for spurious environmental crimes in Ecuador ranks among the biggest legal scams in history".
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Lawyer's Rights Watch Canada points out that Steven Donziger has been under house arrest for longer than the six-month maximum sentence that contempt of court carries.
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In July 2020, Simon Taylor, director of Global Witness said that the treatment of Steven Donziger "is intended to intimidate the rest of us, to chill the work of other environmental and corporate accountability advocates".