Chiquita fined 25 million dollars for payment to paramilitaries

[arcos]

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US federal court Monday ordered the Chiquita banana company to pay 25 million dollars in fines for paying millions of dollars in protection money to Colombian paramilitary groups between 1997 and 2004.

Judge Royce Lamberth accepted an agreement between the company and the US government in March that spared company executives.

"I order that the corporation pays a fine of 25 millions dollars," he said.

Chiquita pleaded guilty to paying 1.7 million dollars to one of Colombia's most notorious paramilitary groups, the United Self-Defense Committees of Colombia, which the United States calls a terrorist group.

In accepting the fines, the prosecution agreed not to name or prosecute the executives involved in ordering the payments.

<snip>

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070917/bs_afp/uscolombiaattacks;_ylt=AoMkBxDyus61u7vQTtcYJoSs0NUE

[jobycom]

1. Or what? The American government will break their legs?

Am I the only one who sees irony in this?

[acmavm]

2. No. And do you see the incredible injustice as well. The execs

who did business with these killers get to keep their name out of the public domain. Their victims are dead.

This makes me sick.

[Retired AF Dem]

3. Stuck between a rock and a hard place

Pay the "protection" money and pay the U.S. Govt. Paying one keeps you alive the other keeps you in business.

[trashcanistanista]

4. What about the new law that states

the govt. can sieze all assets if you are caught supporting terrorists? Or does that only apply to democrats?

[Judi Lynn]

5. Not that many people really swallow their yarn that they "had to" pay this money

to the death squads to protect themselves. Most people recognize they were paying money to the death squads to protect their workers from getting a slightly better wage the union leaders would have attempted to negotiate if they hadn't been killed or otherwise intimidated by the death squads. The "protection" money was never anything more than protection from paying higher wages.

Rather than paying death squads to knock off their union leaders, Chiquita should have simply been more mature, more respectable, more conscientious and not tried to steal the labor of the desperately poor cheap labor in Colombia.

Colombian authorities have taken a different view. Colombia's attorney general has said he will seek the extradition of eight Chiquita employees allegedly involved in making the payments. The attorney general, Mario Iguaran said: "The relationship was not one of the extortionist and the extorted but a criminal relationship... When you pay a group like this you are conscious of what they are doing."

Colombian prosecutors have also accused Chiquita of providing arms to the right-wing paramilitary groups that were then used to push leftist rebels out of an area in northern Colombia where Chiquita had its banana plantations.
(snip/...)

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/23/1354205

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Anyone who has been wandering in the wilderness all his life about the real nature of Chiquita Bananas, formerly United Fruits, should break down and spend a little time researching what they have wrought vs. the poor people of Latin America, starting with, for example, the Guatemalan coup in 1954 against President Arbenz.

[jobycom]

7. Thanks for this info. That makes it a different story than what the AP said.

I hope everyone reads your version of it.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Here's more you might find worthwhile. I'm surprised it turned up in the Washington Post:

Colombia May Seek Chiquita Extraditions
Eight Executives Targeted in Paramilitary Payment Scandal

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 21, 2007; Page D01

~snip~
Iguaran's comments came during an investigation that has progressed from uncovering ties between paramilitaries and congressmen allied with President Álvaro Uribe to dredging up links that death squads might have had with big companies and wealthy families. Up until now, the scandal has been known as "para-political," but Iguaran suggested it could snowball into the corporate world.

"You're very close to also talking about para-businesses," Iguaran said.

Iguaran said that among the issues the attorney general's office is investigating in the Chiquita case is the November 2001 unloading of Central American assault rifles and ammunition at the Caribbean dock operated by the firm's Colombian subsidiary, Banadex. The smuggling operation was detailed in a 2003 report by the Organization of American States.

The Justice Department did not deal with the smuggling operation in its plea deal. Chiquita admitted making payments to the paramilitaries from 1997 to 2004, which Iguaran said violated Colombian law. On Sept. 10, 2001, the State Department declared the AUC, as the paramilitary coalition is known, an international terrorist group, making it a violation of U.S. law for a U.S. company to conduct business with the organization.

"This was a criminal relationship," Iguaran said. "Money and arms and, in exchange, the bloody pacification of Uraba."

In the 1990s, the leader of the paramilitaries, Carlos Castaño, consolidated the group's hold in Uraba, murdering hundreds of people in a scorched-earth campaign designed to terrorize anyone who might support Marxist rebel groups. Castaño's paramilitaries then used Uraba as a platform to launch attacks, often with the help of military units, across the country.

"This is where Castaño hatched and started implementing his plan to exterminate not only guerrillas, but any civilian who got in their way," said Maria McFarland, Colombia researcher for Human Rights Watch, the New York rights group. "And it's from that starting place that the paramilitaries grew and took over control of much of the country."

Francisco Ramirez, a leading labor lawyer with the biggest group of workers, the Unified Confederation of Workers, said Chiquita and other companies took advantage of a lawless region to support paramilitaries who not only focused on liquidating rebels but also organized labor. "These are the policies of the companies," he said. "This is their security policy, just like they have a corruption policy and a policy to violate labor laws."
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR2007032001698.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You may recall Chiquita huddled with the White House over this. Looks as if their powerful connections saved their hides.
Also, there's the fact that _{George H. W. Bush} used to own a major interest in Chiquita when it was still United Fruit, or some point between. Creepy!



The death squad killer mentioned in the article, Carlos Castaño, was discovered taking a dirt nap after his own brother, another death squad leader, had him and a bunch of his body guards killed.

[Skink]

9. Nobody really thought Bush was selling fruit right?

You may recall Chiquita huddled with the White House over this. Looks as if their powerful connections saved their hides.
Also, there's the fact that George H. W. Bush used to own a major interest in Chiquita when it was still United Fruit, or some point between. Creepy!

[soothsayer]

6. man, now WE'RE shaking down Chiquita. You give in to the first thugs, you gotta give into these too

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. Have I misread this, or isn't this - even so far as it goes, which is clearly,

nevertheless, limited - one of the things that has made the USA great, certainly aspects of it? That's not say that I don't wish the Colombians well in their efforts to obtain fuller, indeed, the fullest justice (this side of eternity. We can't bring the dead people back).

I can't imagine one of our courts in the UK doing the same.

[Judi Lynn]

11. They are paying fines, but not being prosecuted beyond that.

Court OKs Chiquita plea deal
Business Courier of Cincinnati - 2:46 PM EDT Monday, September 17, 2007

A federal court on Monday approved a plea deal whereby Chiquita Brands International Inc. will pay $25 million to settle charges that it paid bribes to terrorist groups in Colombia.

The fine is the largest ever imposed under U.S. counterterrorism laws, according to an Associated Press story. The company was also placed on probation for five years.

Federal prosecutors, in charges filed last March as part of the plea arrangement, said that high-ranking corporate officials approved payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Chiquita said that the payments were made by a former subsidiary because of threats to the safety of its employees. The company said it cooperated with the federal investigation.

The U.S. Department of Justice decided not to file charges against 10 company executives accused of facilitating the bribes.
(snip)

http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2007/09/17/daily7.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Too much publicity surrounded this problem to allow the _Bush administration to look the other way, finally, or it would have. They've known about it for a long time after the Chiquita company discussed it with them privately, and they advised them to simply sit tight.

A fine of this size is completely manageable for his father's former company.

[Joe Chi Minh]

15. I don't doubt you. It perhaps didn't impinge on the Bush family's interests sufficiently,

for them to see the need to suppress it. And in the current state of things, even a half-just action has to be first rate PR. It evidently was to me, though the fact that "too much publicity surrounding the problem...", etc., still seems to me something of a tribute to your checks and balances.

[Lasher]

18. No, Chiquita shareholders are paying the fine. Executives will suffer no consequence.

Big difference. This is typical of anything negotiated by a corporation's senior management. They always put themselves first.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Chiquita Discloses Illegal Payments, Then Continues Making Them

CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

Chiquita Discloses Illegal Payments, Then Continues Making Them – and Justice Decides Not to Charge Execs
21 Corporate Crime Reporter 36, September 16, 2007

For six years, Chiquita International illegally paid protection money to a right wing terror group in Columbia.

The company’s outside lawyer found out about it and disclosed the illegal payments to the Justice Department – hoping for leniency.

The outside lawyer told the company’s highest executives to stop the payments.

But after repeatedly giving these warnings, and after the self-disclosure to the government, the company continued making the payments.

And yet, no individual executives will be charged.

The company itself will plead guilty at a sentencing hearing on September 17 in Washington, D.C.

The plea agreement calls for Chiquita to pay a $25 million fine and be sentenced to five years probation.

The Justice Department decided last week that corporate criminal liability was enough.

“The United States gave serious consideration to bringing additional charges in this matter,” the Justice Department said in its sentencing memo. “In the exercise of its prosecutorial discretion, the United States has decided not to do so.”

Off the hook – Roderick Hills the former head Chiquita’s audit committee.

Off the hook – Chiquita’s former general counsel Robert Olson.

Off the hook – Chiquita’s former CEO Cyrus Freidheim.

Chiquita’s outside law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, warned repeatedly – and to no avail – that Chiquita should stop its payments to the right wing terror group.

More:
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/chiquita091607.htm

[OzarkDem]

13. Carl Lindner - close Bush Buddy

Lindner helped finance most of Bush's failed business ventures, then put him in the WH. One of the key members of Bush's shadow government. Surprised Chiquita is not getting off the hook for this.

He controls Chiquita, has for years. Who knows what other nefarious crap they were involved in down in Colombia, helping both Bush I & II. I'm sure Octafish has a file on Carl.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/president/players/lindner.html

Carl Lindner, a Cincinnati businessman with international interests ranging from banking to bananas, is one of the nation's wealthiest men. His frequent, abundant contributions to political candidates and parties have put him at times in the public spotlight.

His friends defend his political giving as merely the generosity of a public spirited citizen. His critics suspect that his money buys him political access and influence. In either event, he is one of several large contributors at the center of the controversy over whether the American campaign-finance system is serving the public interest.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, he dropped out of high school to help run the family's ice-cream store when his father became ill. With a head for figures and a knack for financial deals, Lindner built the business into a chain of stores known as United Dairy Farmers. Today there are over 200 such stores run by his brother Robert. Dairy-store profits have fueled Lindner's investments in financial institutions. First, he acquired savings and loans companies and then diversified into the insurance business. Today he runs a corporate empire known as American Financial Group.

As chairman and chief executive of American Financial Group, Lindner presides over business assets worth $14 billion by his own reckoning. He is a former part owner of The Cincinnati Enquirer. He controls, among other businesses, Chiquita Brands bananas. Lindner has made a name for himself on Wall Street as an astute investor. He has a reputation for "bottom fishing" -- that is, buying a financially troubled or undervalued company at a bargain price and transforming it into a profitable enterprise. He was an important customer of "junk" bond king Michael Milken, who worked for the now-defunct investment banking firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert. For years American Financial employed a Cincinnati lawyer, Charles Keating, as corporate counsel and executive vice president. Lindner and Keating parted company, and Keating moved to Phoenix and gained notoriety in the 1980s as the man behind the multibillion-dollar failure of Lincoln Savings & Loan.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Why is it our corporate media always call Colombian death squads "paramilitaries?"

That only encourages people to look up more information on them and discover that in many cases, the "paramilitaries" do the absolutely FILTHY atrocities with which the ordinary Colombian military can't afford to associate itself.

It doesn't take long to start running down information which clears all this up, like the town which the military surrounded, letting no one in, and no one out, while the death squads ("paramilitaries") KILLED EVERYONE.

They BOTH have been caught, the military and the death squads, dressing the bodies of peasants in rebel clothing to make it appear they had slaughtered actual guerrillas, rather than villagers.

[truthisfreedom]

16. I'm sure glad I don't like bananas.

At all.

[JCMach1]

17. 1.7 million for TERRORIST activities! They should be taken to GITMO