Chiquita Banana Slips on Terror Peel
Posted on Wed Mar 14, 2007 at 06:47:54 PM EST
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Chiquita Banana has agreed to pay $25 million for paying Colombian terrorists to protect its workers in the field. It will also plead guilty to a criminal Information.
The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with terrorist organizations in Colombia.
In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials. 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 right-wing group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in September 2001.
Chiquita also paid money to FARC. How did the Justice Department find out?
"Bottom line: CANNOT MAKE THE PAYMENT," the company's outside counsel advised in February 2003, according to an excerpt of a memo included in court documents.
In April 2003, company officials and lawyers approached the Justice Department and told prosecutors they had been making the payments. According to court documents, the payments continued for months.
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