By now you probably know that the Chiquita Company, formerly called United Fruit, was nicked $25 million by the Justice Department for knowingly funding the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group that has been considered a terrorist organization by the US since 2001 and whose body count is estimated at 20,000. Over the course of seven years, more than 100 payments amounting to $1.7 million were made by Chiquita to the AUC, who was driving leftist guerillas and, from the sound of it, anyone else with a pulse out of the banana-rich Uraba region where Chiquita was conducting business. The company claims the payments were extorted, and that they made them with their employees’ safety in mind. Colombia is considering demanding the extradition of eight Chiquita employees for their roles in aiding the AUC, and there is a question of 3,400 AK-47s being stored in a Chiquita warehouse in Turbo, Colombia in 2001.

My favorite article about the scandal so far was published on Wednesday by Forbes.com. It details how Moody’s Investor Service has not reduced Chiquita’s rating as a result of the fine, and in fact says that Chiquita’s stock was up, presumably because the market had feared a larger penalty from the State.

My second-favorite article about the situation wasn’t technically about Chiquita. Marcela Sanchez’s OP-ED in the Washington Post was more about how members of Colombia’s government who are linked to the AUC continue to fall in a corruption investigation so massive it has its own nickname in Colombia: “the parapolitica scandal.” Pretty clever nickname, if you ask me. The article, which examines the effectiveness of Plan Colombia, the government’s initiative to stifle the drug trade and end civil conflict by enforcing the rule of law, is useful insofar as it links members of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s government with the AUC. It’s not hard to imagine that some of the more than $5 billion the US has given to Plan Colombia found it’s way into the hands of paramilitaries, which means not only was one of our most historically imperial corporations funding terrorism directly, the US government was likely funding it indirectly. Whether they knew that or not is hard to say. But we do know that we are still helping to fund Plan Colombia, and according to Sanchez, the number of government officials linked to the AUC may grow exponentially as the investigation unfolds.

I personally wonder what’s going to be done with that $25 million fine. Certainly it won’t be paid to the families of innocent Colombians in the Uraba region who were victimized by the AUC’s campaign of terror. As part of the plea agreement, Chiquita executives avoid prosecution. So essentially what’s happened is the Justice Department has charged the company what one might call a luxury tax for hiring a terrorist organization for security. In exchange for the 25 million penatly, Chiquita has been, at least in this country, absolved of any wrongdoing, and has actually seen their stock rise. And people wonder why globalization and free-market capitalism haven’t spread worldwide?

Maybe if Chiquita was in the oil business instead of the fruit business it could have gotten the US military to intercede on their behalf and avoided this whole messy business.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Politiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.