[News] Chiquita banana company is fined $25m for paying off Colombian paramilitary groups

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Chiquita banana company is fined $25m for paying 
off Colombian paramilitary groups

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2362755.ece


By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles




Published: 16 March 2007

The Chiquita banana company, one of the world's 
biggest and most powerful food companies, has 
admitted paying "protection" money to Colombian 
paramilitary groups identified by the US 
government as terrorist organisations - and has 
agreed to pay a $25m (£13m) fine to wrap up a federal investigation.

The settlement was quickly denounced as too 
lenient by human rights groups, which have long 
said that Chiquita's bananas are "stained with 
blood", accusing the company of paying 
paramilitary groups not only to protect workers, 
but also to target union leaders and agitators 
perceived as going against the company's commercial interests.

They also pointed to President George Bush's 
policy that anyone financing a terrorist 
organisation should be prosecuted as vigorously as the terrorists.

Rather than handing down indictments through a 
federal grand jury, the Justice Department chose 
to file a "document of criminal information" 
against Chiquita Brands International - a less 
aggressive form of prosecution that usually leads 
to a settlement rather than a criminal trial.

Under the deal worked out on Wednesday, Chiquita 
will plead guilty to one charge of doing business 
with a terrorist group, and face no immediate sanction other than the fine.

Chiquita itself insists that the only money it 
ever paid was to protect the well-being of its workers.

Local human rights groups in Colombia have 
accused the company in the past of using the 
ports it controls to smuggle weapons into the 
country for the United Self-Defence Forces of 
Colombia, often described as a death squad.

Gloria Cuartas, the former mayor of Apartado in 
the heart of banana country in Colombia, told CNN 
she was calling for a boycott of Chiquita products.


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