Critics question Chiquita's claim that it was forced to pay Colombia's paramilitaries

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Houston Chronicle South America Bureau

April 2, 2007, 1:05AM
Critics question Chiquita's claim that it was forced to pay Colombia's paramilitaries

By JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle South America Bureau

~snip~
Chiquita told the U.S. Justice Department that it made more than 100 payments in cash and checks to the paramilitaries between 1997 and 2004. Court documents show that many payments were delivered after the paramilitaries were blacklisted as terrorists and in spite of advice from outside lawyers that Chiquita stop paying the gunmen.

During the seven-year period of the Chiquita payments, the paramilitaries carried out 62 massacres in Uraba. More than 3,700 people were killed in armed clashes in the zone while 60,000 Uraba residents were forced to flee their land, according to Colombian government statistics.

Fear among workers
In one infamous 1998 incident, paramilitaries burned 11 suspected rebels with acid before killing them. In another, paramilitaries, toting a list of names, stopped a bus and killed eight banana workers execution style, firing bullets into their heads. Later, the surviving passengers saw the killers laughing and shooting pool at a bar next to a police station.
(snip)

Colombia's Bananagate comes amid a wider scandal in which dozens of Colombian politicians as well as the nation's former intelligence chief have been accused of collaborating with paramilitaries to kill leftists, influence elections and steal state funds. So far, eight members of Congress have been jailed.



Read more: http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4679763.html

[papau]

1. rich and corporate GOPers like United Fruit/Chiquita killing political opposition - duh -whats new?

Those that could connect Bush to scandal during 1999/2000 seemed to die - one fellow as he was waiting to make a left turn - bullet to the head - just a "Texas suicide" - Indeed the famous "Clinton death lists" always seemed to me to be a mirror of a right wing fear that Clinton would do to them what they had been doing for a century to opponents of the rich and corporate.

Ken Lay lived on to die outside of prison - conviction overturned because of his death because his appeal of his conviction was not ruled on by the time of his death - Economic justice in America I guess.

I do not expect our media to review our CIA/Corporate "election help" given Latin and South America since 1930's - heck our efforts almost kept those nasty "leftists" out of power everywhere -

A few nuns and children had to die to protect the right of private enterprise to bring the US bananas that could be sold at a decent profit by Chiquita (United Fruit).

Don't expect our media to say anything about Chiquita's latest legal problem other than the usual GOP handout about conspiracy theorists, and indeed I expect this to be kept at the level of a discussion about a DOJ investigation in the business section in the paper - and to not even hit the TV airways.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?

Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?
Written by April Howard
Wednesday, 11 April 2007

What happens when "Business as Usual" clashes with the vocabulary of the "War on Terror"? We got a glimpse of one case this March when the Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International, Inc., paid a $25 million settlement to the United States Justice Department for paying off right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia, groups which Washington classifies as "terrorist organizations."

Chiquita is one biggest and most powerful food marketing and distributing companies in the world, and one of the world’s largest banana producers. The company shows annual revenues of approximately $4.5 billion and about 25,000 employees operating in more than 70 countries.<1> The banana market, worth about $5 billion a year in 2001, is the most important global fruit export. The majority of the 14 million tons of bananas exported every year come from Latin America.<2>

The charges state that from 1997 to 2004 several unnamed, high-ranking corporate officers from Chiquita and its Colombian Banadex subsidiary made monthly payments, totaling $1.7 million, to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).<3> Even though Chiquita's outside lawyers insisted that payments stop in 2001, Banadex continued write checks to the AUC, though Chiquita executives later decided that cash was a better idea.<4>

The AUC, often described as a "death squad," was incorporated as one of 28 "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" on the U.S. Department of State website in September, 2001.<5> Not without reason; even Forbes Magazine describes the AUC as "responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports." With approximately 15,000 to 20,000 armed troops, the AUC uses "kidnapping, torture, disappearance, rape, murder, beatings, extortion and drug trafficking" among its standard techniques.<6> One of many massacres committed by the AUC took place in 2001, while the AUC was receiving funds from Chiquita. In the early morning on January 17, 80 AUC paramilitaries entered the rural town of Chengue and killed 24 men by smashing "their skulls with stones and a sledgehammer." Only one 19-year-old paramilitary member has been punished, though he named police and navy officials who organized the mass murder.<7
More:
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1015/1 /

There's excellent background on Chiquita's bloody Latin American history in this article.