One of the financiers of an environmental lawsuit that led to a $19 billion verdict against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador told a judge that he came to regret funding the case once after learning that it may be a fraud.

Burford Capital LLC Chief Executive Officer Christopher Bogart told a Manhattan federal judge yesterday that his firm, which he described as the world’s largest dedicated litigation financing provider, supplied $4 million to the Ecuadorean plaintiffs and later sold the share when it became “deeply concerned about the mounting evidence of fraud and misconduct.”

Chevron alleges in the non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that a Manhattan lawyer, Steven Donziger, and others involved in the pollution case engaged in a “racketeering enterprise” and won the 2011 verdict through coercion, manufactured evidence and bribery of the Ecuadorean judge who wrote it. The company is seeking a ruling preventing the plaintiffs from trying to enforce the verdict in courts around the world. Burford reached an agreement with Chevron to provide testimony after being described in the lawsuit as a party involved in the scheme, Bogart said yesterday.

Donziger contends he did nothing unlawful in Ecuador and that Chevron engaged in similar tactics. Kaplan said in a ruling last week there’s “considerable evidence” the pollution case was “tainted by fraud.”

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