No Terror Charges for Chiquita Execs

[subsuelo]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Tuesday it will not prosecute 10 Chiquita Brands International executives involved in the company's now-defunct payoff of Colombian terrorists protecting its most profitable banana-growing operation.

The banana company admitted to paying 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.

Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iCuokPSHqjatli1DHmQRGvD5l5Zg

[MadMaddie]

1. Ahh...the * DOJ doing what it does best turning it's back on

Corporate Crime...

[subsuelo]

6. It's only terrorism

when someone else is doing it

[gratuitous]

7. It's only terrorism

If an SUV gets torched.

[subsuelo]

9. you know, I'm trying to imagine

Some company in, let's say Pakistan for example, paying off, oh, say, Al-Qaeda and the 19 alleged hijackers on Sept 11th.

Now image Pakistan government giving that company a mere fine for that involvement.


U.S. Dept of Justice displays extreme hypocrisy in the case of Chiquita!

[valerief]

2. As Condi would say, "No one could have anticipated that." nt

[Wilms]

3. You're either with us, or with the terrorists. n/t

[KingBob]

4. And how much money

did these "honorable" executives donate to the RNC? Just asking.

[Snazzy]

5. blood for bananas

Some think 'banana republic' is some sort of cute appellative for a mall store. haha. I encourage anyone who doesn't know how this particular brand, formerly United Fruit, has been manipulating and abusing people and politics everywhere south of our border for about the last century to google say 'United Fruit' AND 'Dulles'. A good starting point.

It is a wholly owned subsidiary of everything we do wrong. And of course plenty of links to our current scumbags.

But all that cocaine that gets here, hey that's just an accident.

[Bacchus39]

8. "protection" fees and extortion are quite commonly

used by the AUC and the FARC.

[Parche]

10. Lock Them Up

:bounce: :bounce: :hi:

[Judi Lynn]

11. The company executives were concerned about "protecting" their employees

from the burden of having to decide what to do with an extra dollor or two due to the hard work of union organizers.

The company has been notorious from the very beginning of its appearance in Latin America for its exploitation and abuse of its human resources, the very people who do ALL the work which makes the exectives wealthy, and keeps the people desperately poor.

The AUC is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organization and US law clearly states that it is illegal for any person knowingly to provide material support or resources to an organization on that list. The problem is that enforcement of this law is very weak. Way back in 2001, four Congressmen sent a letter to former Attorney General John Ashcroft calling for increased scrutiny of multinational corporations and their support for armed groups who threaten human rights activists. However, Chiquita is just one of many corporations around the world with ties to paramilitary groups. This issue is of special concern to those who support labor rights, since the AUC has been implicated in violence against trade unions, which has made Colombia the most dangerous country for labor organizing in the world.
(snip)

http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/international_labor_right/2007/03/chiquita_is_ban.html#more

[brentspeak]

12. So Chiquita executives admit to a hiring hitmen, but then DON'T face charges?

I don't know about "terrorism", but the act of hiring hitmen constitutes "conspiracy to commit murder" in any other situation.

[Bacchus39]

13. more from the story

The government's long-awaited decision was part of a sentencing memo urging U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth to fine Chiquita $25 million and have the company serve five years probation for its illegal deals. The sentencing hearing in front of Lamberth is set for Sept. 17.

If accepted, the fine would mark the largest criminal penalty ever imposed under U.S. global terrorism sanctions laws.

Prosecutors dropped potential charges against the executives — most of whom have not been publicly identified — "based solely on the merits and the evidence" against them, said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

Chiquita voluntarily alerted the Justice Department in April 2003 of the deals, which by that time had been ongoing for 15 years. The banana company admitted to paying 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 U.S. government designated the AUC a terrorist group in September 2001. Additionally, Chiquita made payments to 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.

Chiquita has said it was forced to make the payments and was acting only to ensure the safety of its workers.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Once again, Chiquita (formerly United Fruit) has been able to avoid justice.

It's a very old story. Vicious wars have been fought protecting United Fruits (Chiquita's) ability to exploit the vast numbers of poor people in Latin America, and governments have been overturned.

Anyone who doesn't know the history of this company, start with Guatemala, 1954, and President Arbenz, and the American Republican President Eisenhower, and follow the history forward.

Chiquita's hundred year history in Colombia

Armed conflict

"Chiquita's victims are living in dire poverty," said Paul Wolf, co-counsel in the case. Wolf spent the month of May speaking to victims' groups in shanty towns where families seek refuge from the death squads, which continue to murder anyone perceived as an enemy. "Reparations can't bring back the dead, but there are a lot of widows and orphans with no means of support. Most of them have fled their homes, and don't know where their next meal will come from," observed Wolf.

{Washington, D.C.}

Advocates for the families of 173 people murdered inthe banana-growing regions of Colombia filed suit today against Chiquita Brands International, in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C. The families allege that Chiquita paid millions of dollars, and tried to ship thousands of machine guns to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC. The AUC is a violent, right-wing paramilitary organization supported by the Colombian army. In 2001, the Bush Administration classified the AUC as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization." Its units are often described as "death squads."

According to family representatives, the AUC was used to assassinate their husbands, wives and children, who were apparently interfering with Chiquita's financial interests. In the last ten years, more than ten thousand people have been murdered by the AUC, many of them in the banana zones where Chiquita financed the AUC's operations.

"This is a landmark case, maybe the biggest terrorism case in history," said Terry Collingsworth, who directs the litigation. "In terms of casualties, it's the size of three World Trade Center attacks." Collingsworth is already known in Colombia for his lawsuits against Coca Cola, Drummond, and Nestle for the targeted killings of union leaders by the AUC.
(snip/...)

http://www.anncol.org/uk/site/doc.php?id=288

[Judi Lynn]

15. Great article: The Chiquita Story: How the Times Goes Soft on Corporate Crime

The Chiquita Story: How the Times Goes Soft on Corporate Crime

By Charlie Cray, HuffingtonPost.com. Posted August 27, 2007

In the New York Times' bizarro world, a multinational caught financing right-wing terror groups is only looking out for its workers.

~snip~
The fact is that the A.U.C. have long been known for controlling the largest share of the country's cocaine export business, using gruesome methods to kill those who stand in their way. Chiquita presumably knew that when it started making the payments. Chiquita also continued to make payments to the group after September 10, 2001 when the US State Department included the Colombian paramilitaries and guerrillas in its list of terrorist organizations. You'd think that the next day they would have begun to think twice about that.

Moreover, the payments themselves were used by the AUC to buy guns. Guns that were used to kill Chiquita workers and their friends.

In other words, it's well known among labor rights groups that the A.U.C. was not hired by the company to protect workers, as Sporkin suggests. Just the opposite: the terrorists were apparently paid off at the same time that they targeted anyone who seemed to want to organize a union to represent workers at the company's Columbian operations.

Thus, the Times might have balanced Sporkin's spin with a statement from attorneys from International Rights Advocates (a project of the International Labor Rights Fund), which is helping relatives of the 173 people slain by the AUC sue Chiquita.

(Chiquita is not the only US corporation in trouble for coordinating with the paramilitaries. Both Coca-Cola and Drummond, an Alabama based coal corporation, have come under fire for hiring paramilitaries to kill union leaders.)
(snip/...)

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/60853/?page=1

[Javaman]

16. because, you know americans have to have their bananas...

:banghead: