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Faced with potentially billions of dollars in legal liability, Chiquita Brands International is asking a federal appeals court to block lawsuits filed against it in the U.S. by thousands of Colombians whose relatives were killed in that country's bloody, decades-long civil war.
The produce giant, which long had huge banana plantations in Colombia, has admitted paying a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group $1.7 million over a seven-year period.
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The list has at least 4,000 names, each one targeting Chiquita Brands International in U.S. lawsuits, claiming the produce giant's payments and other assistance to the paramilitary groups amounted to supporting terrorists.
Cincinnati-based Chiquita in 2007 pleaded guilty to similar criminal charges brought by the Justice Department and paid a $25 million fine. […]
Chiquita has long maintained it was essentially blackmailed into paying the paramilitary groups — perpetrators of the majority of civilian deaths in Colombia's dirty war — and insists the lawsuits should be dismissed. […]
[However, the] lawsuits could be strengthened by the recent release of some 5,500 pages of internal Chiquita documents that were produced during the Justice Department probe.
The documents detail how payments were hidden by accounting maneuvers, and shed light on Colombian government and political involvement with the paramilitary group. They also show there was a debate among Chiquita executives about whether the payments were proper. […]
The Chiquita lawsuit cites a number of AUC massacres, including a July 1997 operation in the town of Mapiripan in which at least 49 people were tortured, dismembered and decapitated. In February 2000, about 300 AUC troops tortured dozens of people and killed 36 people.
The top AUC leader, Carlos Castano, told Chiquita executives in a meeting that the money would be used to drive out the guerrillas and protect the company's interests. […]
It wasn't just money that Chiquita provided the AUC, according to court documents. In 2001, Chiquita was identified in invoices and other documents as the recipient of a shipment from Nicaragua of 3,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition. The shipment was actually intended for the AUC.
The guns and ammo were unloaded by Chiquita employees, stored at Chiquita warehouses, and then delivered by trucks to the AUC, court papers said. They also claim there were at least four similar shipments, prompting AUC leader Castano to boast about the deals in a Colombian newspaper.
Chiquita is overigens de erfgenaam van de United Fruit Company, een bedrijf met een lange geschiedenis van misdragingen in Centraal-Amerika.
