From the National Security Archive, just released, "The Chiquita Papers"

[Judi Lynn]

April 11, 2011
The Chiquita Papers

Bogotá, Colombia, April 7, 2011 - Confidential internal memos from Chiquita Brands International reveal that the banana giant benefited from its payments to Colombian paramilitary and guerrilla groups, contradicting the company's 2007 plea agreement with U.S. prosecutors, which claimed that the company had never received "any actual security services or actual security equipment in exchange for the payments." Chiquita had characterized the payments as "extortion."

These documents are among thousands that Chiquita turned over to the U.S. Justice Department as part of a sentencing deal in which the company admitted to years of illegal payments to the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)--a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization--and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The Archive has obtained more than 5,500 pages of Chiquita's internal documents from the Justice Department under the Freedom of Information Act and is publishing the entire set online today. Key documents from the Chiquita Papers are included in the recently-published document collection, Colombia and the United States: Political Violence, Narcotics, and Human Rights, 1948-2010, now available as part of the Digital National Security Archive from ProQuest.

The documents provide evidence of mutually-beneficial "transactions" between Chiquita's Colombian subsidiaries and several illegal armed groups in Colombia and shed light on more than a decade of security-related payments to guerrillas, paramilitaries, Colombian security forces, and government-sponsored Convivir militia groups. The collection also details the company's efforts to conceal the so-called "sensitive payments" in the expense accounts of company managers and through other accounting tricks. The Justice Department investigation concluded that many of Chiquita's payments to the AUC (also referred to as "Autodefensas" in many of the documents) were made through legal Convivir organizations ostensibly overseen by the Colombian army.

New evidence indicating that Chiquita benefited from the illicit payments may increase the company's exposure to lawsuits representing victims of Colombia's illegal armed groups. The collection is the result of an Archive collaboration with George Washington University Law School's International Human Rights and Public Justice Advocacy Clinics and has been used in support of a civil suit brought against Chiquita led by Earth Rights International on behalf of hundreds of Colombian victims of paramilitary violence.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/colombia/index.htm

[dipsydoodle]

1. aka The United Fruit Company.

Disgusting outfit with an horrendous past. As if a name change made any difference. :puke:

Hooray for the UK where broadly speaking our supermarkets only sell Fair Trade bananas - a Billion £'s a year now.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3436220/Why-were-bananas-for-Fairtrade.html

[bemildred]

2. Slave labor never goes out of fashion with certain sorts of "enterpreneur".

And of course one has to have some enforcers to keep the slaves in their place.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, was Chiquita's private lawyer who got them off with a...

...handslap ($25 million fine) for hiring death squads to murder trade unionists on their farms in Colombia, in a deal with the Bush Junta. Thus, the victims' survivors (who had filed suit) got nothing. (I've often wondered where that $25 million ended up. Bought shovels for Junior to clear brush on his ranch? Bought trophies for Rumsfeld's desk? Funded snuff vids from Guantanamo? Bought Alberto Gonzalez lots of aspirin? Bought five high-end child prostitutes for ___?)

--------------------------

Sorry for my sarcasm, but this is a filthy, filthy business. And it ain't over by any means. The Obama administration is actively covering up Alvaro Uribe's absolutely criminal government of Colombia, the crimes of the U.S. funded ($7 BILLION) and trained Colombian military and the crimes of the Bush Junta in Colombia (which may include U.S. military or U.S. military 'contractor' participation in death squads, consolidation of the trillion dollar-plus cocaine revenue stream directing it into Bush Cartel, CIA and U.S. bankster pockets, and God knows what else.) And now that blood-drenched Colombia is all prepped for U.S. "free trade for the rich," Obama is proposing it to this Scumbag, ES&S-Diebold (s)elected, far rightwing Congress.