A Florida jury on Monday found banana company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing the Colombian paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).
The jury
in the civil case, in federal court in the Southern District of Florida, found
that “Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to the AUC to a degree
sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm to others.”
Chiquita,
one of the world’s largest banana producers, has been ordered to pay a total of
$38.3 million to the families of eight victims of the AUC, which was a
far-right paramilitary group that was designated a terrorist organization by
the US. The group disbanded in 2006, according to Stanford University’s Mapping
Militants Project.
In an
amended Florida lawsuit, which was filed in 2008, the plaintiffs alleged
payments from Chiquita to the AUC propped up the paramilitary group’s violence
in Colombia and that the company should be held liable for the group’s murders.
In a
statement to CNN, Chiquita said it planned to appeal to jury’s verdict.
“The
situation in Colombia was tragic for so many, including those directly affected
by the violence there, and our thoughts remain with them and their families.
However, that does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these
claims,” the company’s statement said. “While we are disappointed by the
decision, we remain confident that our legal position will ultimately prevail.”
In 2007,
Chiquita pleaded guilty to making over 100 payments to the AUC totaling over
$1.7 million despite the group being designated a terrorist organization.
Chiquita recorded the AUC payments as “security services,” though the company
never received any actual services from these payments, according to a US
Justice Department press release from the time. The company agreed to pay the
US government a $25 million fine, the US said in its release.
An
unnamed company executive had told the Justice Department that the payments had
been made under the threat of violence, according to the release. However, the
Florida jury ruled that Chiquita failed to “act as a reasonable businessperson
would have acted under the circumstances.”
In a
social media post, Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, reacted to the American
jury’s Tuesday decision and asked why the same ruling was not made in his home
country.
“Why
could US justice determine in judicial truth that Chiquita Brands financed
paramilitarism in Urabá? Why couldn’t Colombian justice?” he said in a post on
X translated from Spanish.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/11/business/chiquita-banana-liable-paramilitary-group-colombia/index.html
***Samantha Delouya, Mauricio Torres and Verónica
Calderón, CNN
