Chevron “wins” the Holbrooke award while it is currently aggressively lobbying his employer, the State Department, to intervene in a $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron. How is this not a major conflict of interest?

My latest piece has just come out on AlterNet. It is called: “Does a Senior Obama Official Have Unseemly Ties to Notorious Human Rights Abuser Chevron?”

I would encourage people to read the full article, but here is a brief excerpt:

Last month Chevron was awarded the “Richard C. Holbrooke Award for Business Leadership” in “recognition of the company’s global public health programs.” The award, from the Global Business Coalition, was bestowed upon Chevron at a June 24 ceremony in honor of its work “to eradicate HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.”

In giving Chevron the award, the GBC asserted Chevron “has long been a leader in the fight for global health.” But those who have monitored the company’s record for years beg to differ.

“Giving Chevron an award for its fight against malaria is like giving Phillip Morris an award for smoking cessation programs,” says Steve Kretzmann, a longtime environmental activist and Executive Director of Oil Change International.

While giving such an award to Chevron is perverse enough on its own, let’s remember whom it is that the award is named after. Richard C. Holbrooke is currently the Obama administration’s point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan with a substantial portfolio that includes areas of Chevron’s current and, likely, future operations. Before becoming Obama’s “Af/Pak” envoy, Holbrooke was the president and CEO of GBC, an organization he spent the past decade building. Holbrooke, who cut his teeth working for Henry Kissinger during Vietnam, has, for decades, marched back-and-forth over the golden bridge linking corporations and government. Chevron received the award in large part because it committed $30 million over three years to the GBC-affiliated Global Fund in 2008 while Holbrooke was GBC’s president and CEO.

In its press release on the award, Chevron labeled the prize “prestigious” despite the fact that it is the first time it has been presented and was named after Holbrooke after he joined the Obama administration.

“Chevron is increasingly viewed around the world as a rogue oil company whose human rights record is worse than its peers,” charges Steven Donziger, an attorney who has long battled Chevron in human rights cases. “I think Holbrooke allowed his name to be used for this award because he is aware of Chevron’s serious problems. It is precisely the reason he let his name be used. It is part of Holbrooke’s ersatz attempt to show Chevron the path to a greening of their image.”

The Holbrooke award, critics charge, is the latest development in a high-stakes lobbying/public relations campaign. Over the past few years, Chevron has deployed a team of high-powered former senior U.S. officials-turned-lobbyists in Washington to attempt to quash [a major lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador where the company faces $27 billion in damages] and, more recently, to pressure the Obama administration to punish Ecuador — by canceling its preferred trading status — for allowing the case to proceed. The company tried the same tactic with the Bush administration. “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this — companies that have made big investments around the world,” said one unnamed Chevron lobbyist

Read the full article at AlterNet.