Topic: Kerry Kennedy stands to make $40M in secret anti-oil deal

[Pandora]

Professional do-gooder Kerry Kennedy — Gov. Cuomo’s ex-wife and the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy — has called the oil-drilled rain forests of Ecuador “the biggest corporate environmental disaster on the face of the Earth, in the history of the world.”

The human-rights activist penned opinion pieces and lobbied officials to voice her outrage at the damage oil companies have caused to the town of Lago Agrio, where 1,700 square miles of rain forest have been destroyed and people sickened.

What Kennedy has never mentioned during her campaign is that she is being paid handsomely for her seemingly selfless advocacy.

Kennedy, 52, was secretly hired as a “public-relations consultant” by the lawyer representing the Ecuadoreans in an $18 billion lawsuit against Chevron, according to court documents.

Cashing in on her respected family name and legacy, Kennedy raked in tens of thousands of dollars and was given a 0.25 percent stake — worth as much as $40 million — if the $18 billion judgment handed down by an Ecuadorean judge is ultimately upheld. (Chevron has not yet paid pending its countersuit in Manhattan federal court.)

Kennedy was paid a flat $50,000 by lead attorney Steven Donziger on Feb. 22, 2010, bank statements made public in the case show.

She was set to pull down an additional $10,000 per month, according to a September 2010 draft budget by the law firm. And she was to get another $40,000 in expenses in June 2010, according to an invoice from Donziger.

But being a hired shill didn’t stop Kennedy from presenting herself as a crusader with only a personal interest and familial duty to Ecuador’s indigenous masses.

In a CNN appearance on Oct. 22, 2009, and in a column for the Huffington Post on Nov. 4, 2009, she opined about her trip to the South American nation.

“Nothing could prepare me for the horror I witnessed,” she wrote.

In neither instance was it mentioned that she was hired by the law firm or has a financial stake in the case.

The legal quagmire dates back to 1993, when 30,000 villagers sued Texaco for dumping crude oil and emitting toxins into the watershed and air while drilling 325 wells.

Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and completed a $40 million cleanup, approved by the Ecuadorean government.

In an August 2009 e-mail, Donziger wrote, “Kerry Kennedy . . . is coming to Ecuador and wants to help us along with Orin Kramer, major pension fund guy and Dem fundraiser in NY. This could give us a real boost . . . Will cost money, but not much.”

Donziger would make hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees if he wins, Chevron claims in its countersuit.

Kennedy, who is paid $225,239 a year as president of the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights and is the mother of Cuomo’s three daughters, was also courted for her political connections.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cash_kerry_in_rain_forest_3zYGnmDnsQ1Qyv536irIWL#ixzz1jeMeMZbE

"Professional" do-gooder is right.  And professional liar.

[Libertas]

May she acquire a severe case of Chagas disease!

[Sectionhand]

She's just a chip off her grandfather's bootlegging , stock-manipulating block !

[Libertas]

That too!

[ToddF]

This really is a continuation of the thread I had moved to climate, even though it's not about climate.  This whole stinking lawsuit by the most corrupt lawyers this country puts out, aided and abetted by the third world banana republic known as Ecuador.

This really is a story that needs to be told far and wide.  The corruption from top to bottom, from lawyers to politicians to scientists.  No surprise a Kennedy is caught up in it.

[Libertas]

If something like this involving a bunch of conservatives, the calls to investigate and prosecute these conspirators would be deafening!