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Multinational fruit company Chiquita is facing lawsuits in the US over its decision in the 1990s to pay protection money to Colombian paramilitaries.
The relatives of five American missionaries abducted and murdered by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have filed civil cases in Florida, accusing the company of secretly financing and arming the group and therefore being culpable in their deaths.
Last year Chiquita agreed to pay a $25million (£12.5m) fine after voluntarily informing the US Justice Department that it had made illegal and hidden payments to various guerrilla groups – under duress – to protect its banana farms from attack. The company maintains that it had little option if it was to stave off the ‘very real’ threat of attacks on its staff and their families, and has said it will contest the lawsuits ‘vigorously’.
Chiquita claims that it decided to declare the payments in 2003 when senior managers discovered they were illegal under US law because the guerrilla groups had been designated as terrorist organizations.
It says that during the 1990s it became increasingly difficult to protect its 4400-strong workforce as left- and right-wing paramilitaries gained control of areas surrounding its farms and government forces were unable to maintain law and order. In 1995 guerrillas killed 28 Chiquita employees on a bus and in 1998 two more workers were assassinated on a farm.
The US-based company recently sold its Colombian farms at a loss of $9m, ‘to extricate ourselves from this difficult situation’.
The relatives of five American missionaries abducted and murdered by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have filed civil cases in Florida, accusing the company of secretly financing and arming the group and therefore being culpable in their deaths.
Last year Chiquita agreed to pay a $25million (£12.5m) fine after voluntarily informing the US Justice Department that it had made illegal and hidden payments to various guerrilla groups – under duress – to protect its banana farms from attack. The company maintains that it had little option if it was to stave off the ‘very real’ threat of attacks on its staff and their families, and has said it will contest the lawsuits ‘vigorously’.
Chiquita claims that it decided to declare the payments in 2003 when senior managers discovered they were illegal under US law because the guerrilla groups had been designated as terrorist organizations.
It says that during the 1990s it became increasingly difficult to protect its 4400-strong workforce as left- and right-wing paramilitaries gained control of areas surrounding its farms and government forces were unable to maintain law and order. In 1995 guerrillas killed 28 Chiquita employees on a bus and in 1998 two more workers were assassinated on a farm.
The US-based company recently sold its Colombian farms at a loss of $9m, ‘to extricate ourselves from this difficult situation’.
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