Chiquita’s years long trial over collaboration with a Colombian paramilitary group has finally wrapped up.
Chiquita Brands International, one of the world’s premier fruit corporations, was recently found liable for sponsoring a series of killings between 1997 and 2004 after close to two decades of litigation. The killings were carried out by a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
The AUC, founded in 1997, was created out of the merging of several smaller right wing paramilitary groups looking to combat left wing militant groups in Colombia. The group engaged in murders, largely of trade unionists and political opponents, kidnappings, torture and the drug trade, which was one of its main sources of revenue.
In 2001, the AUC was designated as a terrorist organization, and grew to receive the same label from Canada and the European Union, as well as a host of other countries.
From 1997 to 2004, several years after the group’s terror designation by the United States in 2001, Chiquita paid the AUC for security services that were supposed to involve protecting its operations, amounting to around $1.7 million.
However, Chiquita never likely received any meaningful security assistance from the group. The company claims that they began paying the AUC after being threatened with violence against their workers and facilities, but the situation was more complex.
Essentially, instead of security assistance, Chiquita gave money to the AUC, a known terror organization, in order to operate on their land.
During this period, the group committed countless murders and hundreds of claims have been brought against Chiquita. However this lawsuit was centered on nine claims, eight of which the company was found liable for.
A jury found that the assistance the group received from Chiquita was “to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm.”
Chiquita has been ordered to pay the 8 families over $38 million.
A separate trial against Chiquita by another group of families of victims of AUC violence that was slated to begin in mid-July has been put on pause as Chiquita appeals the decision.
