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[remediating] until we've had a chance to extract the evidence we need." In response, Donziger<br />

cautioned Fajardo to "[b]e careful with written letters-informal and oral meetings are better[.]<br />

[W]e don't want Texaco to use some letter to say we are obstructing remediation." In another<br />

email to Donziger and other conspirators, Fajardo expressed concern that the government was<br />

assuming responsibility for remediation, and that it would cost an "extremely low" $96 million.<br />

The RICO Defendants then turned to the government for assistance in shutting down the<br />

remediation.<br />

99. Ultimately, the judicial inspection process was short-lived. The first and only<br />

time settling experts issued a report for one of the judicial inspection sites was in February 2006,<br />

at which point they agreed with Chevron's expert's findings and concluded that TexPet's<br />

remediation met the standards agreed to with Ecuador. They further agreed that there was no<br />

evidence of contamination posing a risk to either human health or the environment.<br />

100. When it became apparent to the conspirators that the judicial inspection process<br />

was not going to provide them with the record they needed to extort a payment from Chevron,<br />

they abandoned that process and set about developing their own false history and factual record,<br />

entirely under their contro!' Using a series of paid experts whom they pressured, misled or<br />

recruited to their scheme, the conspirators created an increasingly extreme and distorted record,<br />

and then manipulated the Lago Agrio court into accepting that false history as the product of<br />

independent analysis.<br />

(i) Inducing an Expert to Report Biased and False Results<br />

101. To create their first false data point, the RICO Defendants pressured their U.S.<br />

expert David Russell to develop an exaggerated damages estimate and continued to "use it to put<br />

out a figure that will scare Chevron and investors," long after Russell sent Donziger a cease-and­<br />

desist letter demanding that he stop using the estimate.<br />

102. In 2003, Russell, who was retained by the RICO Defendants to oversee the<br />

judicial inspection process for the Lago Agrio Plaintiffs and prepare a damages analysis, initially<br />

estimated the cost of remediation to be approximately $6 billion. In Russell's own words, that<br />

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