A South Florida federal court Monday found the banana-producing U.S. multinational Chiquita Brands International guilty of funding a Colombian militia and ordered it to pay $38.3 million to the militia’s victims, according to multiple statements.
“Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to the [Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia or] AUC” that created “a foreseeable risk of harm to others,” the eight jurors of the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida ruled, according to a statement from the National Security Archive (NSA). There were nine victims in the case, but the court reportedly judged that the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) murdered eight of the victims and that Chiquita was liable.
The AUC was a “brutal paramilitary death squad,” according to EarthRights International, a co-representative of the nine victims of the militia. Responsible for atrocities during the 1990s and 2000s, the AUC was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. in 2001, according to the NSA’s statement. The group was also involved in drug trafficking, land grabbing, kidnapping, disappearances and extortion, among other crimes all disguised as counterinsurgency operations, according to InSight Crime.
Chiquita also “failed to act as a reasonable businessperson” and failed to prove either that the AUC actually threatened them or that there was “no reasonable alternative” to paying them, the jurors further ruled, according to the NSA’s statement.
The weekslong trial ended 17 years of litigation, EarthRise and the NSA said.
The $38.3 million in damages will go to the families of eight men whom the AUC murdered, the court ruled, according to a statement by Cohen Milstein, a law firm also representing the victims.
Following the U.S. government’s designation of the AUC a Foreign Terrorist Organization on Sep. 10, 2001, and a Specially-Designated Global Terrorist on Oct. 31, 2001, it became a federal crime for a U.S. organization or individual to fund the AUC, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Chiquita then voluntarily disclosed to the U.S. government in Apr. 2003 it had been paying the AUC. The disclosure sparked a federal investigation, the DOJ said. Chiquita — through Banadex, its Colombian subsidiary and most profitable banana-producing operation by 2003 — paid the AUC over $1.7 million in over 100 installments from sometime in 1997 through Feb. 4, 2004, a 2007 sentencing memo archived by the NSA showed. Chiquita, through Banadex, paid the right-wing terrorist militia in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Santa Marta, where the corporation ran its banana-producing operations, according to the memo. Chiquita made some of the payments against legal advice, the memo revealed.
Chiquita thus was in “an unholy alliance” with the AUC, prosecutors alleged. The defense argued that Chiquita was extorted and had no choice but to pay the AUC, according to the NSA.
Chiquita also paid two Colombian left-wing terror groups — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) — when the groups controlled areas where the corporation ran banana-producing operations, the sentencing document revealed. (RELATED: Chiquita Bananas Blocked A 9/11 Victim’s Bill)
Banana giant Chiquita Brands International must pay more than $38 million in damages to victims of a Colombian paramilitary group the company was found liable for financing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. https://t.co/oeVJ4topGT
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 11, 2024
Colombia’s decades-long civil war which began in the 1960s and during which the various militias were active killed at least 220,000 people, the New York Times reported.
Chiquita pleaded guilty at the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia to “one count of engaging in transactions with a specially-designated global terrorist” back in 2007, the DOJ said. The corporation agreed to pay a $25 million criminal fine, among other penalties.
Monday’s ruling, however, marked the first time Chiquita would answer to human rights abuse victims of the AUC, according to the NSA. Chiquita reportedly settled claims made by families of six FARC victims in 2018.
The nine AUC cases were bellwether cases; the AUC victims were in their hundreds, the NSA said. EarthRights called Monday’s verdict “historic.” One of the victims, calling the verdict a triumph, also said Chiquita’s actions dragged the families into the litigation. “We have a responsibility to our families, and we must fight for them,” the individual said in part, according to EarthRights.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, reacting to the verdict, queried via Twitter why the Colombian justice system did not appear to deliver justice in such a case.
“Funding a terrorist organization can never be treated as a cost of doing business,” said then-U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor in 2007, according to the DOJ.
