“We refuse these allegations and we repeat that Chiquita and its employees are victims, and that every single decision the corporation made aimed at protecting the lives of its employees and their families.” The international corporation Chiquita Brands is again on trial for giving big amounts of money to Colombian armed groups from 1994 to 2004, the years when it had a branch in Colombia. After paying a court settlement of 25 million dollars, the corporation with the blue trademark logo has been sued by the relatives of people killed in the region of Urabà for “hiring, arming and/or directing terrorist groups responsible for extreme violence, and for the death, the torture, the detention of those who were considered a threat for the business of Chiquita in Colombia.” This is what the Bogota newspaper El Tiempo reported in an article published on June 7, quoting “in exclusive” the official petition presented by lawyers Terry Collingsworth, of International Rights Advocates, Paul Wolf, human rights attorney, and Bob Childs, an Alabama attorney.

“The El Tiempo article gave a rough and incorrect description of the payments made by Chiquita in Colombia”, Luciana Luciani of Chiquita Italia told PeaceReporter. “The corporation was forced to make those payments by left and right-wing paramilitary groups in order to protect the lives of its employees at a time when kidnapping and murders were common and the government was unable to guarantee security and safety.” Words that are against what the prosecutors have declared and what the Colombian newspaper has published: “The payments made to the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) were authorized by the highest management and reported in the account books as security payments. This money funded the AUC right from the start, and this makes Chiquita one of the oldest and main funding sources for the group.”

El Tiempo also cited Salvatore Mancuso, the founder of the paramilitary group: “In a recent pleading, Mancuso declared that he received the payments.” Chiquita has something to say also on this regard: “In its report on the subject, the US Justice Department declared: ‘Castaño (AUC leader) sent an implicit, and yet explicit, message saying that, if payments were not made, employees and property of Banadex (Chiquita’s Colombian subsidiary) would be under threat. In the Nineties, it definitely became harder and harder to safeguard our employees and their families. Left and right-wing paramilitary groups carried out hundreds of attacks, such as the massacre in 1995 of 28 Chiquita employees who were caught in an ambush while on the bus to work, and the cold-blooded murder, in 1998, of two workers in a plantation, while their co-workers were forced to watch.”

“Since the level of security in the plantation areas was getting lower and lower, despite the government’s attempts to protect the citizens from the attacks of paramilitary groups”, the corporation added in their talk with PeaceReporter, “Chiquita was forced to make the payments to safeguard its employees and workers. It is categorically wrong to maintain that the payments were made for any other purpose. The corporation has been an extortion victim in Colombia, but we will not be extortion victims also in the United States. We will strenuously defend ourselves from meaningless accusations.”

 

Stella Spinelli