Argentina told to seize up to $19.2bn of assets from Chevron The oil giant will also have its bank accounts in Argentina seized and gas sales frozen, a judge has ruled. The 2011 ruling, one of the biggest of its kind in history, stated that 30,000 residents of Ecuador's Lago Agrio region had been harmed by the operations of Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001. However, since Chevron has minimal assets in the country, the claimants tried to get the ruling enforced outside the OPEC-member nation - Chevron is the fourth-largest producer of oil in Argentina. The company attacked the decision, saying that the residents would have filed their lawsuit in the US, where Chevron is based, had they had confidence in their claims. The Ecuador judgment is a product of bribery, fraud, and it is illegitimate. The company does not believe that the Ecuador judgment is enforceable in any court that observes the rule of law," Chevron said in a statement on its website. Pablo Fajardo, the Ecuadorean lawyer who represents the residents, said that a seperate lawsuit will now be filed in Argentina in order to enforce the latest ruling. He filed a similar lawsuit in Brazil in June and another one in Canada in May. In early October, Chevron lost a bid to have the US Supreme Court block enforcement of the ruling.