Free Trade & Terrorismo: Banana Biz Backfires

- This article illustrates some of the affairs major corporations are involved with as the traverse the planet on their great 'paper chase'.

Chiquita to pay $25M in terror case
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press WriterWed Mar 14, 7:30 PM ET

"Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid a Colombian terrorist group for protection in a volatile farming region.

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 several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers at the Cincinnati-based company 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.

Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. The company also made similar payments to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, according to prosecutors.

Colombia's banana-growing region is a zone over which leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries have fought viciously. Most companies have extensive security operations to protect employees in the area.

"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."

Colombia has one of the highest kidnappings rates in the world. Arrangements between companies and either guerrillas or paramilitaries are not uncommon but it is impossible to know how much money is paid each year.

Chiquita sold its Colombian banana operations in June 2004.

Details of the settlement were not included in court documents but Aguirre said Chiquita would pay $25 million in fines, which it set aside this year. The company reported the deal to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A plea hearing was scheduled for Monday.

The payments were approved by senior executives at Chiquita, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Prosecutors said Chiquita began paying the right-wing AUC after a meeting in 1997 and disguised the payments in company books.

"No later than in or about September 2000, defendant Chiquita's senior executives knew that the corporation was paying AUC and that the AUC was a violent paramilitary organization," prosecutors wrote in Wednesday's court filing.

Company attorneys made it clear the payments were improper, prosecutors said.

"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.

The document filed by federal prosecutors is known as an information. Unlike an indictment, it is normally worked out through discussions with prosecutors and is followed by a guilty plea."

-Here is a blog with more information regarding the "Banana Trade": http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Bananas.asp

- Also, here is another link to Zmag.org with an article entitled "Battling the Banana Barons", about Chiquita resistance in Honduras: www.zmag.org/zmag/zarticle.cfm?Url=articles/jan97corr.htm

PEACE!