[NYTr] Cocaine, Death Squads and Chiquita Bananas

[nytr at olm.blythe-systems.com]

sent by Bill Koehnlein

Cocaine, Death Squads and Chiquita Bananas

The Guardian (UK) - March 15, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2034737,00.html

Banana Firm Fined for Paying off Colombian Paramilitaries

A major US-based banana producer is to pay a fine of nearly £13m after
admitting it made protection payments to a right-wing Colombian
paramilitary group implicated in human rights abuses and cocaine
smuggling.

In a deal with the US justice department, announced last night,
Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International pleaded guilty to one
charge of conducting business with a terrorist group, agreeing to a fine
of $25m.

The settlement resolves a lengthy justice department investigation into
the company's financial dealings with both right-wing paramilitaries and
leftist rebels in Colombia.

Prosecutors alleged that Chiquita paid around £900,000 between 1997 and
2004 to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC, in
exchange for protection for its workers following threats by the group.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in
Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's
cocaine exports. The US government designated the right-wing militia a
terror organisation in September 2001.

This was the charge admitted by Chiquita, but prosecutors say the
company also paid off other groups, namely the National Liberation Army,
or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
as control of the company's banana-growing area shifted.

Left and right-wing paramilitary groups have fought vicious battles over
Colombia's banana-growing region, with most of the victims being local
people.

"The information filed today is part of a plea agreement, which we view
as a reasoned solution to the dilemma the company faced several years
ago," Chiquita's chief executive, Fernando Aguirre, said in a statement.

"The payments made by the company were always motivated by our good
faith concern for the safety of our employees."

Chiquita sold its Colombian banana operations in June 2004.

According to court documents, senior company executives knew about the
payments by September 2000 at the latest, and were told they were
illegal.

"Bottom line: CANNOT MAKE THE PAYMENT," the company's outside legal
advisers said in February 2003, according to an excerpt of a memo
included in court documents.

Chiquita voluntarily told the justice department about the payments in
April 2003.