DHAKA: A US judge has upheld Chevron`s allegations that an Ecuadorian court decision ordering it to pay $9.5bn for oil pollution in the Amazon jungle was fraudulently obtained.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan concluded on Tuesday that plaintiffs in the 2011 case and their lawyers committed a host of corrupt actions, including ghost-writing the original judgment, submitting fraudulent evidence and bribery, Al-Jazeera reported.

Witnesses in the case included a former Ecuadorian judge who admitted to accepting bribes.

In barring enforcement of the original fine in US courts, the decision handed Chevron a big win in its long fight with Ecuador.

"Justice is not served by inflicting injustice. The ends do not justify the means," Kaplan wrote.

He said it was a sad outcome to have to rule that the Ecuadorian court judgment "was obtained by corrupt means", because it will perhaps never be known whether there was a case to be made against Chevron, the San Ramon, California-based oil company.

Kaplan concluded that Chevron "might bear some responsibility" for pollution in Ecuador.

"It is distressing that the course of justice was perverted," he wrote in a nearly 500-page ruling that followed a trial last year.

The verdict was a setback to the indigenous people from Ecuador`s oil-rich Lago Agrio in the eastern region of Oriente, who have long sought compensation for pollution by US oil company Texaco between the 1970s and early 1990s.

Oilfield waste dumping

The indigenous people allege that Texaco, which was bought by Chevron in 2001, dumped oilfield waste that polluted large parts of the jungle region, causing widespread sickness and a surge in deaths from cancer.

Chevron has insisted it cannot be held responsible, and argued that corruption underpinned the huge fine ordered by the Ecuador court.

Kaplan said Steven Donziger, the New York lawyer who has represented the Ecuadorian plaintiffs since the 1990s, and his allies secretly paid off the authors of an ostensibly independent report on the pollution damages that was requested by the court.

In addition, he said, "ultimately the [Donziger team] wrote the Lago Agrio court`s judgment themselves and promised $500,000 to the Ecuadorian judge to rule in their favour and sign their judgment".

"If ever there was a case warranting equitable relief with respect to a judgment procured by fraud, this is it," Kaplan wrote.

Chevron called the ruling "a resounding victory for Chevron and our shareholders".

"It confirms that the Ecuadorian judgment against Chevron is a fraud and the product of a criminal enterprise," the company said.

Representatives of the plaintiffs and Donziger promised to appeal.

"Today`s decision should be extremely troubling for anybody who cares about the rule of law," Deepak Gupta, who will represent Donziger in the appeal, said.

"This court has taken the extraordinary and unprecedented step of appointing itself a worldwide fact-finding commission."

Kaplan`s ruling bars the Ecuadorian plaintiffs from enforcing Ecuador`s ruling in a US court, and said his decision bars Donziger and some allies in the case "from profiting in any way from the egregious fraud that occurred here".

BDST: 0858 HRS, MAR 05 , 2014