"Smoking Gun" Video Exposes Chevron's Corruption in the Amazon

The death of the Amazon could mean death for all of us, but companies continue to destroy it.

Carbonated.tv
8 April 2015

California-based nonprofit organization Amazon Watch has released a video showing how Chevron has covered up contamination in the Amazon rainforest.

In fact, it is being reported the footage, which is a part of a series of "secret tapes," could be "smoking gun evidence" of the oil giant’s corruption in Ecuador.

Amazon Watch claims its office in Washington, D.C., received a "mysterious package with no return address" – most probably from a whistleblower in 2011 – containing dozens of DVDs of recordings by Chevron. It also came with a handwritten noted that read: "I hope this is useful for you in the trial against Texaco/Chevron! Signed, A friend from Chevron."

"A staffer avoided opening it fearing it may have been a bomb," the nonprofit states on its website. "We could never have guessed that the contents would instead turn out to be a smoking gun in one of the largest and longest-running environmental cases in the world."

The released footage purportedly shows an exchange between two individuals who appear to be Chevron workers looking for soil samples for oil contamination ahead of an inspection by Ecuadorian court officials.

While they hope to extract "clean" results to submit as evidence for the trial – that has been going on for decades between the residents of Ecuador's Amazon forest and the energy company – all they can find is crude waste in the area they selected for sampling.

While Chevron maintains the video proves nothing, Kevin Koenig, Ecuador program director for Amazon Watch, told VICE News that the latest footage "is smoking gun evidence of Chevron's corruption caught on tape."