How a Brooklyn PR Firm Roiled Ecuadorian Politics
In journalism, it’s funny how sometimes you tug on a loose thread and a sweater starts to unravel. That’s what’s happening in the wake of a dispatch I filed in May about a fake protest in Texas against Chevron (CVX). The story has morphed and migrated, becoming headline news in Ecuador. President Rafael Correa has taken to his country’s airwaves to deny allegations of financial chicanery allegedly linked back to the faux anti-Chevron demonstration.
First some background. On May 30, I wrote:
“Several dozen demonstrators gathered outside the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland to condemn Chevron, which held its annual meeting on Wednesday at the historic site in the west Texas oil patch. Humberto Piaguaje, one of the indigenous Ecuadorian leaders involved in a massive lawsuit against the oil company, helped lead the sign-waving, slogan-chanting cohort. To fill out the ranks of the demonstration, a Los Angeles-based production company offered local residents $85 apiece to serve as what the firm described in a recruiting e-mail as ‘extras/background people.’”
As I reported, I contacted Karen Hinton, the public-relations person for Steven Donziger, the lead plaintiffs’ lawyer in the suit against Chevron and the architect of a long-running media crusade against the oil company. Donziger won a $19 billion judgment against Chevron in Ecuador in 2011. In March, a U.S. district in New York ruled that Donziger’s victory was based on fabricated evidence, bribery, and extortion—findings that Donziger has denied and appealed. Of the Midland protest, Hinton told me via e-mail: “We were not involved at all. Call MCSquared. They handled.”
MCSquared, based in Brooklyn, is a tiny PR firm staffed by several Ecuadorian transplants to the U.S. Hinton told me MCSquared worked for the Republic of Ecuador, which has publicly allied itself with Donziger and his clients in attacking Chevron. The Correa administration has been sponsoring protests around the world against Chevron—events promoted by MCSquared. When I spoke to people at the Brooklyn firm, they acknowledged helping to advertise the Midland protest but insisted they hadn’t paid any protesters and further claimed they didn’t work for the Ecuadorian government.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-07/a-brooklyn-pr-firm-fights-chevron-and-roils-ecuadorian-politics
Rafael's been busted, and he doesn't like it.
Watch him go after reporters who dare question his integrity over this matter with criminal defamation complaints.