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<h1 id="reader-title">New 'Chiquita Papers’ Expose How Banana
Execs Fueled War and Terror in Colombia for Decades<br>
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<div id="reader-estimated-time">April 25, 2017<br>
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<p>A new <a
href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB586-Testimony-Reveals-Chiquita-Executives-Behind-Terror-Payments/">release</a>
of the sensitive internal records of Chiquita Brands
International, the U.S. banana giant that <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">funded
right-wing paramilitary death squads</a> in Colombia,
dubbed the “Chiquita Papers,” reveals new information
about the exact role individual Chiquita executives
played in bankrolling terror in the South American
country.</p>
<p>The new records reveal, for the first time, the
identities and roles of Chiquita executives like Robert
F. Kistinger, head of Chiquita’s Banana Group based in
Cincinnati, Ohio, who both approved and oversaw years of
payments to groups such as the now-defunct far-right
paramilitary organization <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">the
United </a><a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">Self-Defense</a><a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">
Forces of Colombia,</a> better known by its Spanish
acronym AUC.</p>
<p>The investigation found that Kistinger viewed the
payments as a “normal expenditure” and, like the
purchase of things such as fertilizers or agrochemicals,
saw them as “an ongoing cost” of the company’s business
operations. The investigation also identified the exact
members of Chiquita’s board of directors, the corporate
security team, regional and country operations manager,
accountants and internal auditors, attorneys and
third-party agents who carried out the payments over the
years.</p>
<p>The AUC was responsible for years of violent terror,
leading a coordinated campaign of assassinations and
massacres aimed at unionists, political activists,
public officials and others perceived as guerrilla
supporters. By Chiquita’s own account, between 1997 and
2004, the company issued at least <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">100
payments to the AUC</a> totaling some US$1.6 million.</p>
<p>The collusion between the right-wing death squad and
Chiquita is being increasingly uncovered as families of
the victims of paramilitary violence <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">seek
justice through the latest lawsuit</a> against the
corporation.</p>
<p>One of the <a
href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/dc.html?doc=3673223-Report-of-the-Special-Litigation-Committee">documents</a>
also reveals that Chiquita, through its Colombian
affiliates, not only made payments to the AUC and other
paramilitary groups but also to the country's two
largest rebel armies, the FARC and the ELN, between 1989
and 1997. The finding, the result of a Special
Litigation Committee report investigating whether
Chiquita violated the U.S. anti-terrorism statute,
underlines the fact that the company financed Colombia's
war from all sides for decades in order to protect its
bottom line.</p>
<p>According to the report, Chiquita began payments to the
FARC and ELN around 1989, but later slowly phased them
out as right-wing paramilitary groups gained strength.
The payments to guerrilla armies ended around 1997, but
the company continued payments to death squad groups
until 2004.</p>
<p>The details revealed in the investigation may prove key
in providing evidence to prosecute third-party actors
responsible for funding Colombia's civil war as part of
the country's transitional justice process put in motion
by the historic peace deal signed last year by the
government and the FARC.</p>
<p>Colombia's Attorney General's office has stated that
voluntary financing of paramilitary groups in the
context of the internal armed conflict will be treated
as a crime against humanity, putting multinational
corporations like Chiquita on the hook for prosecution.</p>
<p>“It is clear that the banana business, voluntarily
financed an illegal armed group with the specific
purpose of ensuring security regardless of the price or
method used,” the attorney general's office said in a
statement in February.</p>
<p>The revealing new documents have been brought to light
by an investigation by the National Security Archive,
which filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit to gain
access to the records, together with the Colombian media
outlet Verdad Abierta, which have partnered to publish a
<a
href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB586-Testimony-Reveals-Chiquita-Executives-Behind-Terror-Payments/">series
of articles</a> exposing a number of revelations, the
first of which was posted Monday.</p>
<p>The National Security Archive and Verdad Abierta
assessed nearly 400 pages of the secret testimony
Chiquita executives gave to the Securities and Exchange
Commission, a U.S. financial crimes watchdog, in the
early 2000s.</p>
<p>While Chiquita, the U.S. Department of Justice and the
SEC attempted to conceal the identities of executives
and managers who authorized and carried out the
“sensitive payments” program, the National Security
Archive and Verdad Abierta have revealed some of their
identities in their first report of the new records.</p>
<p>The next installation of the reveal will examine the
stories of these corporate officials and their collusion
with the paramilitaries.</p>
<p>Many of these Chiquita executives are currently being
prosecuted, as a U.S. court in December gave the green
light for a <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">trial
launched by victims’ family</a> members to move
forward against the company and its top executives.</p>
<p>A Florida federal judge, Kenneth Marra, threw out
Chiquita’s arguments that the <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">case
should be dealt with in Colombia</a> instead of the
United States, where the company is headquartered in
Charlotte, North Carolina. After more than a decade of
legal battles, the ruling paved the way for a <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">historic
shot at justice</a> in an international court for
foreign and corporate-funded political violence carried
out in the context of Colombia’s more than
five-decade-long civil war.</p>
<p>In addition, in February, Colombia’s Prosecutor
General’s Office announced that around <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Companies-Charged-for-Crimes-Against-Humanity--20170204-0010.html">200
local and international companies will face charges</a>
for crimes against humanity for financing paramilitary
death squads in northern Colombia. Paramilitary groups
are said to be responsible for at least 80 percent of
civilian deaths in the country’s more than
half-century-long civil war that has claimed the lives
of some 260,000 people and victimized millions more.</p>
<p>Along with Chiquita, other multinational fruit
companies including Del Monte and Dole Food Company
voluntarily financed right-wing paramilitaries in order
to benefit from protections provided by the so-called <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Companies-Charged-for-Crimes-Against-Humanity--20170204-0010.html">“Banana
Block,”</a> which served as an umbrella organization
for the AUC and maintained control of certain
banana-producing stories.</p>
<p>Chiquita Brands, in particular, formerly the United
Fruit Company, has a long and sordid history in <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">Colombia
and throughout the rest of Latin America.</a></p>
<p>In one notable incident in 1928, banana workers at a
United Fruit Company plantation near Santa Marta on
Colombia’s Caribbean coast suffered a brutal <a
href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombian-Victims-Take-on-Chiquita-for-Funding-Death-Squads--20161201-0019.html">massacre
at the hands of the military</a> after the company and
other U.S. officials in Colombia painted a labor strike
as a threat of a communist uprising.</p>
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415 863.9977
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