On March 19, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) released a report detailing findings of a two-year investigation into alleged environmental crimes and human rights violations by the Colombia state-owned oil company Ecopetrol. The report relies heavily on the Iguana Papers, a trove of internal Ecopetrol documents provided by whistleblower Andrés Olarte Peña, a former employee of Ecopetrol. Olarte’s allegations against Ecopetrol are also detailed in new reporting by the BBC.
Washington D.C.-based whistleblower firm Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto (KKC) announced that Olarte, a client of the firm, had filed a whistleblower disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleging that Ecopetrol, a publicly traded company, violated U.S. securities laws by, among other things, misleading shareholders and the public about environmental risk and pollution by failing to disclose hundreds of incidents which impacted the environment and/or humans.
“Today’s EIA report, the culmination of a two-year investigation, clearly substantiates the allegations laid out by Mr. Olarte against Ecopetrol,” said Michael Kohn, a founding partner at KKC. “The ball is now in the SEC’s court. Ecopetrol needs to be held accountable for misleading the public about its litany of environmental abuses.”
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