The Iguana Papers
Crude Lies is the result of over two years of investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) into Ecopetrol, the Colombian state-owned oil company. The findings and the internal database associated with them, hereafter referred to as the Iguana Papers, offer a rare look into “business as usual” for the largest corporation in Colombia.
EIA’s investigation was triggered by an email received from Andrés Olarte Peña in September 2021, linking to a series of folders and files. The Iguana Papers were developed from this material. Most of these files were created or updated between January 2017 and January 2019, during the time Olarte worked at Ecopetrol, based in the Bogota corporate headquarters. Olarte’s decision to blow the whistle against the most powerful company in his home country opened the door for a “too big to fail” company to be caught failing.
The Iguana Papers include a variety of documents, such as emails, presentations, internal briefs, third party reports, and databases. Notable highlights include:
- A confidential database collating what seems to be over 300,000 records of environmental non compliances spread across Colombia. These were precisely documented by the company, and involved more than 30 Colombian governmental entities.
- An internal Ecopetrol database that kept track of what appears to be 800+ cases of major environmental damages caused by Ecopetrol operations, revealing how Ecopetrol possibly hid 170 of these cases (~20% of the total) from authorities, in violation of Colombian law.
- Evidence of the sophisticated system of surveillance that Ecopetrol apparently developed to monitor, influence and coerce individuals and organizations identified as a threat to the company’s operations, including environmental activists, union representatives, and community and religious leaders.
The entirety of the Iguana Papers is publicly available by clicking on the button below:
