June 14, 2024
Chiquita’s money helped buy weapons and ammunition used to kill innocent victims.
—US Government sentencing memo, 2008
In 2007, Chiquita — one of the world’s largest banana producers — admitted that for years it had been knowingly paying a Colombian terrorist organization to protect its operations in the country. The consequence was predictably violent, allegedly resulting in thousands of murders, disappearances, and acts of torture. This week, nearly two decades later, a federal jury in South Florida ordered the company to pay upwards of $38 million in damages in the first of multiple waves of wrongful death and disappearance lawsuits.
This explainer explores the factors that drove the multinational to make these payments, the consequences, and the legal impact.
How does a banana company find itself in the position of bankrolling paramilitary forces?
Chiquita has operated banana plantations in Colombia since the 1960s — a decade that saw guerrilla forces taking up arms against the country’s government amidst a backdrop of political instability and violence. This period witnessed the formation of such militant leftist groups as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). In response, right-wing paramilitary groups like the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) emerged, fueled by the support of landowners and corporations wishing to counter what they perceived as rebel threats.
In a 2020 complaint, relatives and victims of paramilitary violence described the dynamic as follows:
In order to undermine communities’ and individuals’ support for the guerillas, the AUC and its constituent groups, including the ACCU, adopted a strategy of terrorism, routinely engaging in death threats, extrajudicial killings, attacks on civilian populations, torture, rape, kidnapping, forced disappearances, and looting. The AUC purposely used killings and cruelty to terrorize the civilian population into ceasing support for guerrilla groups.
According to court documents, AUC leader Carlos Castaño informed Colombian Chiquita subsidiary Banadex in 1997 that his forces would soon drive FARC out of the region of Uraba, where Banadex grew bananas, and that Banadex would be expected to start making regular payments to an intermediary firm. In a 2007 factual proffer, Chiquita claimed, “Castaño sent an unspoken but clear message that failure to make the payments could result in physical harm to Banadex personnel and property.”
AUC’s tactics appear to have mirrored the protection racket methods of other global organized crime syndicates, who have historically demanded protection payments or “krysha” from businesses, their demands backed by implicit threats of violence for failure to comply. Chiquita had been making similar payments to FARC and ELN forces between 1989 and 1997 before they were driven out by the AUC, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo accompanying Chiquita’s initial guilty plea.
In September 2001, the US government designated the AUC as a terrorist organization. Chiquita continued its payments for another three years, before selling off its Colombian holdings in 2004. In 2007, the company pleaded guilty to issuing more than 100 payments to the AUC between 1997 and 2004, amounting to more than $1.7 million. Following its admission, Chiquita agreed with federal prosecutors to pay $25 million in damages. The company’s executives were spared criminal prosecution in both the US and Colombia.
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Leslie Kroeger, a partner at Cohen Milstein and a member of the plaintiffs’ trial team, said, “After a long 17 years against a well-funded defense, justice was finally served.”
Read Explainer: Chiquita Ordered to Pay $38M for Financing Violent Paramilitary Forces in Colombia.