Corporate Accountability Newsroom

A big banner with the words "Chevron Guilty: Clean Up Amazon" fluttering under Richmond-San Rafael bridge on Monday morning, hung by 5 environmentalists who have accused the energy giant of causing rainforest pollution in Amazon, have got them into trouble.

The environmental activists including Amazon Watch finance manager Thomas Cavanagh were all arrested by Marin California Highway Patrol officers.

It happened two days before a scheduled Chevron shareholder meeting at San Ramon Chevron corporate headquarters.

SAN RAMON -- Activists besieged Chevron at its shareholders meeting here Wednesday, in a gathering punctuated by shouts from attendees, warnings the event would be terminated early and interventions by security guards.

The acrimony at the annual meeting nearly obscured the company's discussion of a performance in 2010 that produced a gusher of profits and a jump in the oil giant's stock price.

"We had a tremendous year," Chevron's chief executive officer, John Watson, told the shareholders.

Yesterday, along with hundreds of millions of Americans, you likely settled up your taxes formally with the IRS. Incredibly, most of the biggest and most profitable finance and energy companies in the country are paying far less than their fair share. Last, month, Alex wrote about the most startling—and highest profile—incident involving GE, the country's largest corporation.

An Ecuadorean judge ruled Monday in an epic environmental case that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil drilling contamination in a wide swath of Ecuador's northern jungle and ordered the oil giant to pay $9.5 billion in damages and cleanup costs.

The amount — $8.6 billion plus a legally mandated 10 percent reparations fee — was far below the $27.3 billion award recommended by a court-appointed expert but appeared to be the highest damage award ever issued in an environmental lawsuit.