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Last week, in one of the largest and most unusual settlements by a news organization, The Cincinnati Enquirer published an apology across the top of its front page and said it had agreed to pay Chiquita Brands International Inc. more than $10 million to avoid being sued for a series of articles that exposed the fruit company's criminal practices.
The articles, which appeared in an 18-page special section on May 3rd, were partially based on 2,000 internal voice mails that were said to have been obtained from "a high ranking Chiquita executive."
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Nevertheless, the Enquirer has erased all the articles from its website; previously existing links on the internet to the stories now all lead to the Enquirer's apology to Chiquita instead.
Chiquita, formerly known as the United Fruit Company, is the world s largest banana producer. Among the illegal Chiquita practices uncovered by the Enquirer s investigation:
Chiquita secretly controls dozens of supposedly independent banana companies. It also suppresses union activity on the farms it controls.
Despite its pact with environmental groups to abide by pesticide safety standards, Chiquita subsidiaries have used pesticides in Central America that are banned in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union. Chiquita also released harmful toxic chemicals into farms, killing at least one worker in Costa Rica according to a coroner's report.
Chiquita's fruit transport ships have been used to smuggle cocaine into Europe. More than a ton of cocaine was seized from 7 Chiquita ships in 1997. (The Enquirer story says the illegal shipment was traced to lax Colombian security rather than to Chiquita)
Chiquita executives bribed Colombian officials
Chiquita called in the Honduran military to evict residents of a farm village; the soldiers forced the farmers out at gunpoint, and the village was bulldozed.
An employee of a competitor filed a federal lawsuit charging that armed men hired by Chiquita tried to kidnap him in Honduras.
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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0342243
In Terrorism-Law Case, Chiquita Points to U.S.
Firm Says It Awaited Justice Dept. Advice
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 2, 2007; Page A01
On April 24, 2003, a board member of Chiquita International Brands disclosed to a top official at the Justice Department that the king of the banana trade was evidently breaking the nation's anti-terrorism laws.
Roderick M. Hills, who had sought the meeting with former law firm colleague Michael Chertoff, explained that Chiquita was paying "protection money" to a Colombian paramilitary group on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations. Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal, according to sources and court records, but said that he needed Chertoff's advice.
Chiquita, Hills said, would have to pull out of the country if it could not continue to pay the violent right-wing group to secure its Colombian banana plantations. Chertoff, then assistant attorney general and now secretary of homeland security, affirmed that the payments were illegal but said to wait for more feedback, according to five sources familiar with the meeting.
Justice officials have acknowledged in court papers that an official at the meeting said they understood Chiquita's situation was "complicated," and three of the sources identified that official as Chertoff. They said he promised to get back to the company after conferring with national security advisers and the State Department about the larger ramifications for U.S. interests if the corporate giant pulled out overnight.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080102601.html?hpid=topnews
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A "false and misleading picture"? The Enquirer's lawyers may have found it necessary to bend over fast and far. But in fact the "Chiquita Secrets Revealed" series presents a damning, carefully documented array of charges, most of them "untainted" by those purloined executive voice mails. Gallagher's and McWhirter's allegations are largely based on old-fashioned reportorial legwork: land records in Central America, interviews with environmental scientists and trade unions, lawsuit records, leaked corporate memoranda and the reporters' own visits to workers' villages and camps.
Consider:
In Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia, Chiquita "secretly controls dozens of supposedly independent banana companies," the articles charge, evading laws limiting foreign companies' ownership of farms by setting up local fronts for the corporation's under-the-table investments. One Honduran lawyer who works for Chiquita openly told the reporters that the corporation was trying to "hide its assets" to evade ownership restrictions, to "get rid of its Honduran labor union" and protect itself from "lawsuits and child labor law violations."
Throughout much of Latin America, McWhirter and Gallagher charge, Chiquita subsidiaries spray plantations with highly toxic pesticides banned in the United States and Europe, in direct violation of an agreement with environmentalists. They uncovered the autopsy report of an 18-year-old agricultural worker at a Chiquita subsidiary in Costa Rica who died after working in a recently sprayed field. "He didn't have any experience in this kind of job and he wasn't using any protective gear like gloves and mask either," one of the young man's co-workers had told Costa Rican authorities. The company refuses to allow independent scientific researchers to study the impact of pesticides on its plantations; workers are exposed to pesticides without protective clothing, and runoff from Chiquita pesticides contaminates workers' drinking water.
Chiquita security guards, according to the Enquirer series, are widely accused of using "brute force to enforce their authority on plantations operated or controlled by Chiquita. In an internationally controversial case, Chiquita called in the Honduran military to enforce a court order to evict residents of a farm village; the village was bulldozed and villagers run out at gunpoint."
McWhirter and Gallagher also detailed the precarious economic condition of workers on Chiquita plantations.
To repeat, none of these charges -- none -- depend on Chiquita's hacked voice mails. The series does present one allegation to which the voice mails are central: that company executives bribed Colombian officials to gain use of a government warehouse. And there, the voice mail messages Gallagher recorded, legally or not, were deeply revealing of Chiquita's mind-set. "We can only fire him with cause because of his involvement in the Colombian problem if we file a criminal charge against him with Colombian authorities," the series quoted company lawyer David Hills saying of another executive. "Clearly we would not want to do that because we would be implicating ourselves." Another message caught company Vice Chairman Keith Lindner suggesting the company muscle Panama's foreign minister out of a European Union trade mission deemed not in Chiquita's best interests.
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http://www.salon.com/media/1998/07/08media.html |
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