Chevron in Ecuador

The archive of the Clean Up Ecuador campaign website


Documents Showing Borja and His Wife Represented Chevron's "Independent" Lab

This document is a "chain of custody" record dated March 15, 2006 that was submitted to the Ecuadorian court, showing that Chevron contractor Diego Borja relinquished contamination samples to his wife, Sara Portilla, a representative of Severn Trent Labs, the U.S. laboratory Chevron used to test contamination samples taken from around its former oil operations. Portilla's title is listed as Project Manager and her contact information is listed as a Severn Trent Labs company email address. Part of Borja's job with Chevron was to take contamination samples from Chevron's former oil well and sites and adjacent toxic waste pits. In recorded conversations with Santiago Escobar, Borja also said that he stored official contamination samples in his refrigerator in his Quito office.