Whistleblower reveals disturbing details allegedly hidden by major company: 'Hiding stuff from the government'

Thanks to a whistleblower, the BBC World Service and Environmental Investigation Agency have uncovered staggering amounts of unreported oil spills and environmental impacts caused by the Colombian oil company Ecopetrol.

What's happening?

According to the BBC, one former Ecopetrol employee, Andrés Olarte, blew the whistle on the oil company's allegedly nefarious activity. He worked there from 2017 to 2019 and witnessed routine disregard for the company's environmental impact.

He told the BBC that superiors would deflect his questions about pollution data. When he left, Olarte shared troubling data with the EIA, which the BBC confirmed came from Ecopetrol's servers.

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The data reveals that Ecopetrol has caused more oil spills and pollution in Colombia than it reported, indicating that the company conceals spills from authorities.

Data from January 2019 showed 839 sites in Colombia marked with "unresolved environmental impacts" labels. Olarte told the BBC: "It lists which one is hidden from an authority and which one is not, which shows the process of hiding stuff from the government."

Felipe Bayón, Ecopetrol's CEO from 2017 to 2023, denied to the BBC that there was ever a "policy to withhold information about pollution."

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How is Ecopetrol's pollution hurting the region?

Ecopetrol has...

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