Chiquita Brands found responsible for deaths during Colombia’s civil war

A federal jury in Florida found banana maker Chiquita Brands International responsible for financing a far-right Colombian paramilitary group and ordered it to pay $38.3 million in damages to the families of eight men killed by the group during the country’s civil war.

Monday’s landmark ruling came after 17 years of legal proceedings and marks the first time a corporate giant has been found liable in similar lawsuits on behalf of people who were victims of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), plaintiffs’ lawyers say.

In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in transactions with a “specially designated global terrorist” and was fined $25 million, the Justice Department said at the time. The company was accused of making illegal payments to AUC, a paramilitary group known for mass murders, kidnapping civilians and mutilating their bodies.

The nonprofit said the case, originally filed by nonprofit EarthRights International in 2007, was followed by several other cases in 2008. A team of law firms from across the United States represents more than 5,000 Colombians in the proceedings. According to lawyers, trials of additional victims will take place in July.

Monday’s verdict, which came after a six-week trial and two days of deliberations, is also the first time a large U.S. corporation has been held responsible for its role in human rights violations abroad, lawyers said. This ruling may have implications for similar litigation involving such violations.

“This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations around the world: profiting from human rights violations will not go unpunished. These families, victims of armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the lawsuit,” Marco Simons, International Counsel for EarthRights i, said in a statement.

In a statement to USA TODAY, Chiquita said it intends to appeal the jury’s verdict.

“The situation in Colombia has been tragic for so many people, including those directly affected by the violence there, and our thoughts remain with them and their families,” the company said. “However, this does not change our belief that these claims have no legal basis.”

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“The verdict does not bring back murdered husbands and sons”

Eight plaintiffs, including surviving family members of eight men murdered by AUC, alleged that Chiquita paid the brutal militant group nearly $2 million. The group was also accused of “facilitating the supply of weapons, ammunition and drugs despite the knowledge that AUC is an illegal organization engaged in a reign of terror,” Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll law firm said in a statement.

Chiquita’s lawyers say the company made these illegal payments in the late 1990s and early 2000s to protect its Colombian workers from further violence, according to The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys said Chiquita’s support of AUC violated both U.S. and Colombian law. During the trial, they argued that the company willingly cooperated with AUC to protect its profits and quell employee unrest.

On Monday, a federal jury in Florida found that Chiquita knowingly provided the militant group with substantial assistance in the form of cash payments or other means of support, sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm.

Eight men were killed by AUC and Chiquita was unable to prove that its support for the group was due to threatened harm to the company or its employees, the jury found.

“The verdict does not bring back the murdered husbands and sons, but it clarifies the matter and places responsibility for financing terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s door,” Agnieszka Fryszman, lawyer at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, wrote in a statement.

While plaintiffs’ lawyers celebrated Monday’s ruling, they noted that the broader lawsuit against Chiquita includes hundreds of other victims whose “cases may be resolved through additional trials or a final settlement.”

Chiquita’s relationship with AUC

According to Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project, AUC is a paramilitary group in Colombia that operated from 1997 to 2006. The group was a consolidation of many self-defense groups in the country that carried out brutal kidnappings and assassinations.

Although the group was disbanded in 2006, small groups and individuals carried out attacks posing as AUC, according to the Mapping Militants Project. According to the Department of Justice, AUC was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in September 2001 and then designated a specially designated global terrorist group the following month.

“These designations made Chiquita’s transfer of money to AUC, as a U.S. corporation, a federal crime,” the Department of Justice said in a 2007 press release.

Under Chiquita’s 2007 settlement, the company was ordered to pay a $25 million fine, implement a compliance and ethics program and agree to a five-year probation period. The Department of Justice found that for years – from approximately 1997 to February 2004 – Chiquita paid AUC in two regions of Colombia where Chiquita was involved in banana production: Urabá and Santa Marta.

According to the Department of Justice, the company made these illegal payments through its Colombian subsidiary known as Banadex. By 2003, Banadex was the company’s most profitable business.

The Justice Department said that through Banadex, the company paid AUC almost monthly for about six years and made more than 100 payments totaling more than $1.7 million. The company began working with AUC in 1997 after a meeting between then-AUC leader Carlos Castaño and a Banadex senior executive.

“Castaño implied that failure to make payment could result in physical harm to Banadex personnel and property,” the Justice Department said. “No later than September 2000, Chiquita’s senior management learned that the corporation was paying AUC and that AUC was a brutal paramilitary organization headed by Carlos Castaño. Chiquita’s payments to AUC have been reviewed and approved by senior corporate management, including senior officers, directors and employees.”

According to the Justice Department, the company paid AUC by check for several years until June 2002, when Chiquita began paying directly and in cash. Some of the payments were documented in corporate documents as “security payments,” even though Chiquita never received actual security services as part of the payments.

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Chiquita Brands found responsible for deaths during Colombia’s civil war

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