Chevron Corp. (CVX) on Thursday said it has filed an amended complaint in a New York federal court to block enforcement and recognition of a multibillion-dollar ruling against the energy giant, alleging further fraud and corruption in the case.

The amended complaint cites newly discovered evidence, according to Chevron, that the Ecuadorean indigenous plaintiffs' lawyers and consultants, at a minimum, "provided clandestine assistance to the Ecuadorian court in drafting the judgment."

The original ruling, issued in February, ordered Chevron to pay $9.46 billion in damages, including $860 million to the Amazon Defense Front, a coalition formed by the plaintiffs. Both Chevron and the Ecuadorian plaintiffs appealed the ruling.

Last month, three new judges were appointed to analyze the case, including appeals submitted by the two parties, before releasing a second ruling.

On Thursday, Chevron cited several alleged examples of the overlap between the judgment and the plaintiffs' private files. For example, Chevron alleged internal files erroneously replaced "micrograms" with "milligrams" for certain sample reports, and the judgment made the same error for the same samples.

"There is no apparent explanation as to how the judgment would have incorporated these errors and irregularities without cooperation between the Ecuadorian court and the plaintiffs' representatives," said R. Hewitt Pate, Chevron's general counsel.

Karen Hinton, the U.S. spokeswoman for the Ecuadorian plaintiffs, countered that Chevron filed papers before a U.S. court to avoid a jury trial.

"With its latest court filing, Chevron is admitting that it does not think its lawyers can win a trial before a jury," said Hinton. Chevron's amended complaint, however, affirmed the company is demanding a jury trial.

Hinton said the data in question is part of the trial record, and was part of several of the case's 105 expert reports.

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