Having just spent some time acquainting myself with the wretched history of the United Fruit Company - now Chiquita International - I suppose something like this. shouldn't surprise me.
On April 24, 2003, a board member of Chiquita International Brands disclosed to a top official at the Justice Department that the king of the banana trade was evidently breaking the nation's anti-terrorism laws.
Roderick M. Hills, who had sought the meeting with former law firm colleague Michael Chertoff, explained that Chiquita was paying "protection money" to a Colombian paramilitary group on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations. Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal, according to sources and court records, but said that he needed Chertoff's advice.Chiquita, Hills said, would have to pull out of the country if it could not continue to pay the violent right-wing group to secure its Colombian banana plantations. Chertoff, then assistant attorney general and now secretary of homeland security, affirmed that the payments were illegal but said to wait for more feedback, according to five sources familiar with the meeting....
Chiquita's executives left the meeting convinced that the government had not clearly demanded that the payments stop. Federal prosecutors, however, are now weighing whether to charge Hills; Robert Olson, who was then Chiquita's general counsel; former Chiquita CEO Cyrus Friedheim; and other former company officials for approving the illegal payments, according to records and sources close to the probe.
The company has already pleaded guilty to making $1.7 million in payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), and it agreed to pay a $25 million fine. But last week, lawyers for the former Chiquita executives sent letters to the Justice Department, asserting that their clients did not intentionally break the law but believed they were waiting for an answer from the highest levels of the Bush administration...
In September 2000, Chiquita executives learned about the payments in an internal audit but allowed them to continue, according to a prosecution filing not disputed by the company. In the plea agreement, Chiquita officials said they knew that AUC was blamed for numerous killings and kidnappings in the region, but that they had no alternative to keep their workers alive and to secure their operations at a time when FARC guerrillas were blowing up railroads used by U.S. companies and kidnapping foreigners for ransom.
On Sept. 10, 2001, the State Department declared AUC an international terrorist group, making it illegal for a U.S. company to deal with the organization. Prosecutors say senior company executives were aware of the designation in 2002, and internal Chiquita records state that the company's outside legal counsel warned them in February 2003 that they "must stop payments."
A "Colombian paramilitary" group, for those who don't know, is another way of describing a death squad. Those bananas you ate today? They come courtesy of a Colombian death squad. Wonderful world we live in, isn't it?
Subscribe to this blog's feed
