Chiquita's US court settlement over paramilitary payments sparks outrage in Colombia (AMERICAN deal)

Source: Associated Press

Chiquita's US court settlement over paramilitary payments sparks outrage in Colombia
The Associated PressPublished: September 18, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia: Colombia's interior minister slammed a U.S. judge's approval of a US$25 million (€18 million) fine for Chiquita Brands International Inc., saying Tuesday the company was able to get off cheap for making payments to a militia responsible for killing thousands of Colombians.

Rights groups said Chiquita should be barred from ever doing business in Colombia.

A U.S. federal court on Monday court imposed the fine on Chiquita as part plea agreement in which the company acknowledged paying about US$1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to Colombian paramilitary groups.

The ruling sparked outrage within the staunchly pro-American government, as well as among victims of paramilitary violence.

"You can't help but feeling betrayed by the American justice system," said Interior Minister Carlos Holguin. "For US$25 million those who financed a mass massacre of Colombians were able to purchase impunity."



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/18/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Chiquita-Fine.php

Chiquita fined 25 million dollars for payment to paramilitaries
1 day ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US federal court Monday ordered the Chiquita banana company to pay 25 million dollars in fines for paying millions of dollars in protection money to Colombian paramilitary groups between 1997 and 2004.

Judge Royce Lamberth accepted an agreement between the company and the US government in March that spared company executives.

"I order that the corporation pays a fine of 25 millions dollars," he said.

Chiquita pleaded guilty to paying 1.7 million dollars to one of Colombia's most notorious paramilitary groups, the United Self-Defense Committees of Colombia, which the United States calls a terrorist group.

In accepting the fines, the prosecution agreed not to name or prosecute the executives involved in ordering the payments.

On Monday prosectors called the company's actions, which it has said were taken in the face of extortion, "morally repugnant."

"Chiquita was funding the bullets which killed innocent Colombians," said prosector Jonathan Malis.

More:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gyS_10xZPr7-_UiYwBJyQR6blp_g

Chiquita's US court settlement over paramilitary payments sparks outrage in Colombia

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/19/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Chiquita-Fine.php

BOGOTA, Colombia: Colombia's interior minister slammed a U.S. judge's approval of a
US$25 million (€18 million) fine for Chiquita Brands International Inc., saying Tuesday
the company was able to get off cheap for making payments to a militia responsible
for killing thousands of Colombians.

Rights groups said Chiquita should be barred from ever doing business in Colombia.

...


The ruling sparked outrage within the staunchly pro-American government,
as well as among victims of paramilitary violence.

"You can't help but feeling betrayed by the American justice system," said
Interior Minister Carlos Holguin. "For US$25 million those who financed a
mass massacre of Colombians were able to purchase impunity."

with this crowd.

We will never have a decent reputation in the world until we expose these thugs and bring them to real justice.

Do you think if MoveOn gave millions to terrorists for protection that all they would get is a slap on the wrist and a penalty that hardly makes a dent to them? Chiquita will just pass the cost on to the consumer and chalk it up to cost of doing business unless real justice is served.

Meanwhile, on our tee vee, it's OJ, OJ, OJ. Our country is the most uninformed bunch of ignoramuses ever. That's why irrational rationales like "they hate us for our freedom" can pass. This is a real news story, but it only gets a mention while the OJ orgy is just getting started. Sheesh. Jefferson said something along the lines of, "If a nation wants to be ignorant and free, it wants what never was and never will be." Amen.

After ruling, Colombia studies Chiquita extraditions

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3621794

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia said on Tuesday it would seek the extradition of Chiquita Brands
executives if they had broken local law after the U.S. firm made a $25 million settlement for
paying off paramilitary death squads.

A U.S. court on Monday ordered Chiquita to pay the fine after the company pleaded guilty in
March to paying protection money to a militia group accused of some of the worst atrocities
and massacres in Colombia's conflict.


Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos joined other officials in blasting the deal as
outrageous and demanded the fine go to victims of violence, who are already seeking
damages from Chiquita, one of the world's top banana producers.

"If the conduct of executives at the banana company Chiquita Brands constitutes any
crime in Colombia, then we will ask, with the help of the attorney general,
for these people to be extradited," the foreign ministry said in a statement.


Chiquita Banana The Original Commercial:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RFDOI24RRAE

It's so "cute!" Little did Americans know, whenever it was produced, how people were being treated to get that product to their supermarkets.

Very, very interesting.

Chiquita allowed to keep 1/2 profits from ordeal & REPUBLICAN CHIQUITA ATTORNEY ALLEGES MICHAEL CHERTOFF OKAYED CHIQUITA'S ONGOING PAYMENTS!

HERE:

September 12, 2007

Banana Republic

by emptywheel

The Sentencing Memorandum the government filed in the Chiquita case reveals something rather interesting. Chiquita was an equal opportunity terrorist supporter. You see, from 1989 to 1997, Chiquita paid protection money to FARC and ELN, left wing terrorist groups. Then, after FARC and FLN were declared terrorist groups in 1997, Chiquita switched sides, paying protection money to right wing terrorist group AUC instead. Of course, Chiquita got in trouble because, in 2001, after the US declared AUC a terrorist organization, Chiquita kept right on paying their protection money, presumably having no other side to flip to. I guess it's nice not to be bound by ideology in your support of terrorist organizations.

In spite of funding the AUC long after Chiquita became aware they were breaking the law, the government is recommending that Chiquita be able to keep half of its profits from doing business under the protection of a terrorist organization. They're recommending a fine of half their profits, when the maximum fine was twice their profits for the period.

We knew that that was the government's recommendation for a fine. What is new, though, is that the government has decided not to indict the well-connected Republican lawyer Roderick Hills for recommending his clients engage in ongoing criminal behavior. Perhaps Michael Chertoff had something to say about that decision. You see, Hills alleged that Michael Chertoff, the guy who's in charge of our Homeland Security, okayed Chiquita's ongoing payments to right wing terrorists. The government denies those allegations in its Sentencing Memorandum.

The Department of Justice never authorized defendant Chiquita to continue under any circumstances the Company's payments to the AUC--not at the meeting on April 24, 2003, nor at any other point. To be sure, when first presented with this issue at the meeting on April 24th, Department of Justice officials acknowledged that the issue of continued payments was complicated. But this acknowledgment did not constitute an approval or authorization for defendant Chiquita to continue to break the law by paying a federally-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

-snip

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/09/banana-republic.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001926458_chiquita12.html



The admission by a U.S. company that its Colombian subsidiary paid protection money to "terrorists" confirmed what has long been an open secret in Colombia: Businesses are sometimes forced to pay off illegal armed groups.

Extortion is a huge problem for businesses in Colombia, which is struggling with a 40-year guerrilla war. But Cincinnati-based Chiquita set a precedent Monday by saying it had voluntarily revealed to U.S. authorities that its banana-exporting Colombian subsidiary paid off groups the U.S. government calls "terrorist."

Chiquita said it had not realized the payments were illegal in the United States when it made them. Chiquita said it sought Justice Department guidance when it became aware the groups had been designated as foreign terrorist organizations under a U.S. statute that makes it a crime to support such an organization.

The subsidiary, called Banadex, made the payments under pressure to ensure the safety of employees, said Chiquita, which did not reveal the amount or recipient.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest rebel group, in 2000 announced a "peace tax" requiring payments from individuals and companies with a net worth of more than $1 million.

Chiquita's hundred year history in Colombia

Armed conflict

"Chiquita's victims are living in dire poverty," said Paul Wolf, co-counsel in the case. Wolf spent the month of May speaking to victims' groups in shanty towns where families seek refuge from the death squads, which continue to murder anyone perceived as an enemy. "Reparations can't bring back the dead, but there are a lot of widows and orphans with no means of support. Most of them have fled their homes, and don't know where their next meal will come from," observed Wolf.

{Washington, D.C.}

Advocates for the families of 173 people murdered inthe banana-growing regions of Colombia filed suit today against Chiquita Brands International, in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. The families allege that Chiquita paid millions of dollars, and tried to ship thousands of machine guns to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC. The AUC is a violent, right-wing paramilitary organization supported by the Colombian army. In 2001, the Bush Administration classified the AUC as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization." Its units are often described as "death squads."

According to family representatives, the AUC was used to assassinate their husbands, wives and children, who were apparently interfering with Chiquita's financial interests. In the last ten years, more than ten thousand people have been murdered by the AUC, many of them in the banana zones where Chiquita financed the AUC's operations.

"This is a landmark case, maybe the biggest terrorism case in history," said Terry Collingsworth, who directs the litigation. "In terms of casualties, it's the size of three World Trade Center attacks." Collingsworth is already known in Colombia for his lawsuits against Coca Cola, Drummond, and Nestle for the targeted killings of union leaders by the AUC.
(snip/...)

http://www.anncol.org/uk/site/doc.php?id=288

Chaquita should have its charter pulled, assets seized and sent to families in Colombia for compensation, and all those fucking Officers in the company should be sent to jail for life, a Colombian jail.

who are coerced into paying "protection" money to the AUC and or FARC?

just curious.

I don't see why we have two standards of justice, either in this country or outside of it. Individuals, if they committed similar crimes in their capacity as individuals, would spend years in jail and pay fines that damned near bankrupt them, when corporations commit similar crimes, they get a slap on the wrist, and are told not to do it again, with maybe a wag of the finger thrown in. Its a travesty of justice, I swear.

are guilty of a crime if they do pay???

They are more like a cartel or the Mafia paying protection money to OTHER cartels to protect the bottom line. Its not like they were threatened with being destroyed if they didn't comply. They had a choice, whereas many individuals do not.

I suppose. they can divest their assets in Colombia I guess too. the problem will just get passed on.

reasoning. If they could save a few bucks by having their workers in Colombia killed off, they would do it in a heartbeat. That isn't the issue, the issue is that they were financially aiding a CRIMINAL enterprise that terrorizes the citizens of Colombia.

are they just as guilty? are payments to the FARC by relatives of kidnap victims illegal too?

I would tend to agree that Chiquita likely is more concerned with the bottom line over the livelihood of their employees. although, the fact that Chiquita made the payments would seem to contradict that perception.

perhaps the AUC threatened to ruin the plantations and/or infrastructure of the farms as well. but that would just be speculation.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/08/27/colombia.massacre.reut/index.html?eref=edition_americas


Rebels suspected in 9 deaths on Colombian farm
Four children among nine people killed on farm in southern Colombia

Police say guerrillas had threatened farm's owner over extortion payments

Killings second massacre in week attributed to FARC, largest rebel group



BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Nine people, including four children, were shot and killed at a farm in southern Colombia where the owner had been threatened by guerrillas over extortion payments, police said.

The killings on Sunday in Putumayo province near Ecuador's border were the second massacre in a week attributed to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, the country's largest guerrilla force fighting a four-decade conflict.

"The information we have at the moment is the owner of the farm ... had been threatened by the FARC," Police Col. Harold Lara told local radio. "From what we know, most of the bodies were shot in the head."


Authorities last week blamed the FARC for singling out and killing five people in a northern town after going door to door with a list of names, including those of former paramilitaries who fought the rebels before demobilizing.

Violence from Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency has eased under President Alvaro Uribe's U.S.-backed security campaign, especially in cities.

n/t

the full extent of the law. It's the only way to stop it.

fining companies who have been extorted will not stop the paramilitaries and FARC from engaging in extortion.

fining companies will neither stop the extortion nor the killing.

created to "protect" the very few who have owned most of Colombia's land. Stories of the atrocities of these land owners spring up over and over.

At some point the death squads got so powerful, some of them started shaking down some of the landowners, a very wry turn of events. Quite humorous. A farmer was quoted saying he was offered the opportunity to sell his land to the death squad for a mere pittance, and when he hesitated, they told him no problem, they would negotiate the transaction at a later date with his widow!

COLOMBIA: Media ignores death squad terror campaign

28 August 2002
BY ALFREDO CASTRO
BOGOTA � Although it has gone unreported in the mainstream media, paramilitary death squads working with the Colombian security forces have continued assassinating hundreds of civilians in recent weeks.

Among the dead lately are human rights workers, religious and community leaders, land reform and peace campaigners and trade union and student activists.

In what appears to be a systematic campaign to ignore paramilitary abuses in Colombia, the two families that control the Colombian media, the Santos family and the Ardila Lulle family, both of which are also accused of making donations to the death squads, seem to have instructed that their newspapers and television channels ignore any and all reports of human rights violations committed by the death squads.

Unfortunately, the Western media too seem to have followed their lead and despite the fact that the army and death squads have murdered hundreds of civilians in recent weeks not one of these assassinations has been reported.

To follow is a list of some of the serious human rights violations that have been ignored by the mainstream media:

August 14: Paramilitaries entered the town of San Juan del Cesar in La Guajira department and assassinated four civilians whom they accused of being guerrilla sympathisers.

August 10: Land reform campaigner Roberto Hugo Santander is shot dead by paramilitary gunmen in the city of Medellin.

August 4: Paramilitaries entered the indigenous community of Cascajeros in Choco department and shot dead three people including a pregnant woman. They then ordered all residents of the community to leave the region or face the same punishment.

August 3: Paramilitaries massacred four young people in the municipality of Soledad just outside of the city of Barranquilla. Neither the army nor police intervened despite having a heavy presence in the area. Three of the victims have been named as Luis Alberto Cantillo Correa, Ricardo David Borrero and Deiver Garcia Gonzalez.

August 2: A joint marine and paramilitary unit entered the town of Puerto Saija on the remote Pacific coast of Cauca department and proceeded to terrorise the residents whom they accused of helping local FARC guerrillas. The government forces told hundreds of residents of the town and the surrounding area to leave the region or be executed and some 300 people fled by boat down the rivers Saija and Timbiqui. On the morning of August 3, two civilians were found murdered although at around noon some 200 FARC guerrillas arrived and launched a heavy assault on the government troops forcing them to leave the area.

July 31: A death squad shot union activist Alonso Pamplona five times on a road in Sabana de Torres municipality in Santander department. The unionist, who worked for the USO oil workers union, was left to die although miraculously he survived and is now recovering in hospital.

July 29: Paramilitaries �disappeared� union leader Gonzalo Ramirez Triana of the USO oil workers union in the town of Villeta in Cundinamarca department. He has not been seen since.

July 27: 16-year-old Jorge Perez Ardila who worked selling newspapers in the streets of the city of Barrancabermeja was taken away by a group of paramilitaries in the La Victoria neighbourhood. He has not been seen since and was the 60th person that the paramilitaries have �disappeared� in the city so far this year, about half of whom were youngsters whom the death squads accuse of being rebel spies.

July 26: A paramilitary assassin shot and killed Yolanda Castano, a community leader in the La Loma neighbourhood of the southern city of Cali.

July 25: Paramilitaries killed three men on the road leading from the city of Pereira to the city of Armenia in central Colombia. Carlos Antonio Gallego Herrera, Harold Andres Varela Galviz and Andred Humberto Correa Bedoya were all murdered by the death squad whilst two other civilians were injured when the paramilitaries indiscriminately opened fire at the vehicle they were travelling in.

July 22: Paramilitaries executed three people in the Yarumal region of Antioquia department and �disappeared� four others.

July 21: Paramilitaries go on a killing spree in and around the city of Monteria in Cordoba department. In the rural community of Guateque just outside the city the death squads decapitated Rafael Velasquez Vergara.

In the neighbourhood of Brisas del Sinu in the city a separate death squad executed a teenager and another man whom they accused of being guerrilla collaborators. Yet another death squad went from house to house in the rural community of Guacharacal and dragged four peasant farmers away before executing them.

July 19: A death squad entered the community of San Miguel in the municipality of San Carlos in Antioquia department where they killed a man and his three children before they moved into the neighbouring community of Santa Rita and murdered Graciano Gil and Jairo de Jesus Giraldo.

July 16: A paramilitary unit kidnapped four female students at the Creadores del Futuro college in the Blanquizal neighbourhood of the city of Medellin. All four girls were executed and had their bodies dumped in the nearby neighbourhood of La Pradera. The victims were identified as Matalia Carvajal Saldarriaga, Sandra Milena Florez Garces, Sara Lucia Acosta Montoya and Luz Andrea Velasquez Hernandez, all of who were killed for alleged guerrilla sympathies.

July 14: Two paramilitary gunmen in the municipality of Mogotes in Santander department approached Martha Ines Velez, a nun with the Order of the Poor of San Pedro Claver, and shot her dead. She was killed for bringing attention to paramilitary massacres in rural communities in the region that were not reported on by anyone else.

July 13: Paramilitaries in the municipality of Aracataca in Magdalena department stopped a public bus carrying indigenous leader Maria Torres and dragged her from the vehicle. She was shot dead at the side of the road whilst her young daughter and niece were forced to watch.

July 12: A paramilitary death squad entered the community of La Union in Antioquia department and assassinated four men whose names they had on a list. One of the men was forced to dig his own grave before being killed by machete blows and a gunshot to the head.
(snip)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2002/506/27599

I imagine Colombians are upset because it is a US based company that made payments and the money in a sense came from the outside. however, I wonder how many Chiquita workers in Colombia are not terribly upset that the payments were made.

Protecting its workers! That's a hot one.

Why is it the union leaders who attempt to get better conditions for their fellow union workers get murdered in such great number in Colombia?

Anyone here who REALLY "buys" that one is clearly a supporter of exploitative corporations who run roughshod over every country with corruptible leaders who allow them to drain the countries' resources, and hire their people to deliver the products to the coporations at slave wages.

We weren't born yesterday. Democrats are very well aware of the problems with corporations which happened right HERE before substantial gains were made to protect the workers.

I imagine though that a job at Chiquita is better than say subsistence farming.

again, Chiquita could elect NOT to pay the AUC and then call their bluff. According to the previous post you made, how do you think the AUC would respond?? Now are you saying that would be the principled stand for Chiquita to take???


I shed no tears for Chiquita, but no matter how hard you try, you can't ignore the reality of life in Colombia.

I hardly think so.

n/t

Who's this "we?"

No one sensible has ever believed they were involuntary, after researching. The benefits fall to the corportions when the union leaders get slaughtered, leaving the workers to take what drool the corporations will bestow upon them, and even their children (workers), when they take over the regions in which they live, driving many of them out of their homes.

are you telling me after posting a list of AUC murders and repeated atrocities by the FARC as well, that these payments are voluntary contributions to the cause? again, you don't pay, you die.

or at least supplment them.

you don't know anything about Colombia

The company has been notorious from the very beginning of its appearance in Latin America for its exploitation and abuse of its human resources, the very people who do ALL the work which makes the exectives wealthy, and keeps the people desperately poor.

The AUC is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization and US law clearly states that it is illegal for any person knowingly to provide material support or resources to an organization on that list. The problem is that enforcement of this law is very weak. Way back in 2001, four Congressmen sent a letter to former Attorney General John Ashcroft calling for increased scrutiny of multinational corporations and their support for armed groups who threaten human rights activists. However, Chiquita is just one of many corporations around the world with ties to paramilitary groups. This issue is of special concern to those who support labor rights, since the AUC has been implicated in violence against trade unions, which has made Colombia the most dangerous country for labor organizing in the world.
(snip)

http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/international_labor_right/2007/03/chiquita_is_ban.html#more

(Some would have you believe the death squads have been hired to "protect" the workers! Ain't that a hot one?)

"protection" money. how about a euphemism for a bribe and extortion. That is what the paramilitaries and the FARC call it.

in another words, if you give us the money we WON'T bother (kill) you. comprendes????

who live on propaganda alone.

There's no way to call payments to a death squad so it will kill the pesky union organizers "protection" money. It just can't be stretched that far to fit the reality.

n/t

Colombia mulls extradition of Chiquita executives

Thursday, September 20, 2007
Reuters


BOGOTA -- Colombia said on Tuesday it would seek the extradition of Chiquita Brands executives if they had broken local law after the U.S. firm made a US$25 million settlement for paying off paramilitary death squads.

A U.S. court on Monday ordered Chiquita to pay the fine after the company pleaded guilty in March to paying protection money to a militia group accused of some of the worst atrocities and massacres in Colombia's conflict.

Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos joined other officials in blasting the deal as outrageous and demanded the fine go to victims of violence, who are already seeking damages from Chiquita, one of the world's top banana producers.

"If the conduct of executives at the banana company Chiquita Brands constitutes any crime in Colombia, then we will ask, with the help of the attorney general, for these people to be extradited," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The country's attorney general said after the March ruling that Colombia would conduct its own investigation.
(snip)

Investigators are still scouring the country for thousands of victims of paramilitary massacres, who were often hacked up and dumped in common graves.

More:
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/2007/09/20/123278/Colombia-mulls.htm