Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp. said it didn’t request or encourage an Ecuadorean contractor, who it later assisted with a stipend and housing, to meet with a judge presiding over a pollution lawsuit against the company.

“Chevron did not initiate or participate in the meetings and had no advance knowledge that they would occur,” Thomas Cullen, a lawyer for San Ramon, California-based Chevron, said in a letter dated Oct. 26 to Ecuador Solicitor General Diego Garcia.

Garcia, Ecuador’s top prosecutor, had asked Chevron for information in a probe of the oil company’s allegations that Ecuadorean Judge Juan Nunez is biased against it and may have been involved in a bribery scheme.

Secret recordings made by Chevron contractor Diego Borja and an American businessman in May and June in Ecuador led Nunez to step down from overseeing a $27 billion environmental lawsuit against the company. Nunez has denied wrongdoing.

Borja met with Chevron’s attorneys in San Francisco on June 18, four days before he attended a meeting in Quito where a member of Ecuador’s political ruling party allegedly solicited a bribe, according to the letter. That was the only one of four meetings Borja attended where a bribe was mentioned, according to transcripts of the recordings disclosed by Chevron. Borja met with Chevron representatives in San Francisco four days after the Quito meeting, the letter said.

Contradicts Claims

Borja’s meetings with Chevron attorneys in San Francisco before and after the fourth Quito gathering contradicts the company’s claims that Borja’s recordings were made without the company’s knowledge, said Steven Donziger, an attorney for residents of Ecuador’s Amazon region suing the company.

“Each additional communication by Chevron casts further doubt on the company’s own credibility and suggests Chevron’s own lawyers in Quito and the U.S. played a role in orchestrating possible criminal misconduct to evade a judgment at trial,” Donziger said in an e-mailed statement.

Chevron didn’t know about Borja’s fourth meeting, said Kent Robertson, a company spokesman, in a telephone interview.

Borja said in a statement supplied to Chevron by his attorney that he held meetings in Ecuador to promote a water- purification business and was asked to pay a $3 million bribe to garner government contracts that might result if Nunez ordered Chevron to clean up waste from oil drilling, according to a document attached to the letter to Garcia.

Security, Stipend

Chevron has provided “humanitarian assistance” to Borja and his family, including paying for them to travel to the U.S., paying attorneys and security fees and providing a temporary stipend, transportation, housing and assistance for Borja and his wife to find work, Cullen said in the letter.

Borja received payments from Chevron for his work as a logistical contractor, according to the letter.

“There is no connection between these payments and the meetings or the recordings,” Cullen said in the letter.

Cris Arguedas, Borja’s lawyer, didn’t immediately respond to messages left after regular hours yesterday.

The company also offered to pay for security and legal costs for the American businessman, according to the letter.

Steve Smith, a spokesman for the Ecuadorean Embassy in Washington, said Garcia has no immediate comment on the letter and the investigation is ongoing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Karen Gullo in San Francisco at kgullo@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 28, 2009 16:28 EDT