(MENAFN- AFP) Ecuadoran villagers can seek to enforce in Canada a multi-billion-dollar Ecuadoran ruling against oil giant Chevron on pollution in the Amazon rainforest, the country's top court said Friday.
However, the decision does not settle the claim itself.
In Canada and in parallel legal fights in the United States and Brazil, the indigenous people of Ecuador's Lago Agrio region have sought to collect compensation for the mass dumping of oilfield waste between the 1970s and 1990s, after an Ecuadoran court ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion in damages.
The environmental destruction was allegedly committed by Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001.
The villagers had asked the Ontario Superior Court to force Chevron to hand over Can$12 billion (US$11.3 billion) in Canadian assets held by subsidiaries.
The court turned them down, but they won on appeal.
The oil company has refused to pay, alleging fraud and bribery was used to obtain the ruling in Ecuador and maintains that its Canadian subsidiaries are wholly independent and have nothing to do with the case.
"Chevron Canada has a physical office in Ontario, where it was served. Its business activities at this office are sustained; it has representatives who provide services to customers in the province. Canadian courts have found that jurisdiction exists in such circumstances," the Supreme Court said in its decision.
"In an enforcement process like this for the collection of a debt against a third party, assets in the jurisdiction through the carrying on of business activities are undoubtedly tied to the subject matter of the claim."
But it added that "a finding of jurisdiction does nothing more than afford the plaintiffs the opportunity to seek recognition and enforcement of the Ecuadoran judgment."
Thousands of villagers in the polluted area say they were sickened and that many have cancer from the contamination of their water supply from oil spillage.
Chevron contends that Texaco paid all of the required clean-up costs before leaving the country in the 1990s.
Chevron Canada was not immediately available for comment.
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