A federal jury in Florida has found banana company Chiquita Brands International liable for funding a far-right Colombian paramilitary group and ordered it to pay $38.3 million in damages to the families of eight men killed by the group during the country’s civil war.
Monday’s landmark ruling came after 17 years of litigation and marks the first time the large corporation has been held liable in a similar lawsuit against victims of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), plaintiffs’ lawyers said.
In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in transactions with “specially designated global terrorists” and was ordered to pay a $25 million fine, the Department of Justice said at the time. The company was accused of illegally funding the AUC, a paramilitary group known for mass murder, kidnapping of civilians, and mutilation of bodies.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2007 by the nonprofit group EarthRights International, which said several other lawsuits were filed in 2008. A team of law firms from around the United States is representing more than 5,000 Colombians in the case. More victims are expected to go on trial in July, lawyers said.
Monday’s ruling, which came after a six-week trial and two days of deliberations, also marks the first time a major U.S. company has been held liable for human rights abuses overseas, lawyers said, and could have implications for similar lawsuits over human rights abuses.
“This ruling sends a strong message to companies around the world: profiting from human rights violations does not go unpunished. These families victimized by armed groups and companies have asserted their power and won in the judicial process,” Marco Simons, legal counsel for EarthRights International and one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said in a statement.
In a statement to USA Today, Chiquita said it plans to appeal the jury’s verdict.
“The situation in Colombia is tragic for many, including those directly affected by the violence there, and our hearts go out to them and their families,” the company said. “But our belief remains that these claims are without legal merit.”
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“The verdict will not bring my murdered husband or son back to life.”
The eight plaintiffs, including the families of eight people killed by the AUC, allege that Chiquita paid about $2 million to the violent extremist group. The group is also accused of “facilitating the transportation of arms, ammunition and narcotics, knowing that the AUC was an illegal organization waging a reign of terror,” law firm Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll said in a statement.
Lawyers for Chiquita allege that the company made illegal payments to Colombian workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s to protect them from further violence, The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network, reported.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that Chiquita’s support for AUC violated both U.S. and Colombian law. During the trial, they argued that the company willingly cooperated with AUC to protect its profits and stifle employee discontent.
A federal jury in Florida found on Monday that Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to extremist groups in the form of cash payments and other support that was enough to create a foreseeable risk of harm.
The jury said eight men were killed by AUC but that Chiquita had failed to prove it supported the group because of imminent harm to the company or its employees.
“While this verdict does not bring my murdered husband or son back to life, it does shed light on the facts and puts responsibility for terrorism financing where it belongs – on Chiquita,” lawyer Agnieszka Frisman of the law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll said in a statement.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers welcomed Monday’s ruling but noted that the broader lawsuit against Chiquita includes hundreds of victims, “whose cases may be resolved through additional trials or ultimately through settlements.”
Chiquita and AUC’s Relationship
According to Stanford University’s Mapping Extremism Project, the AUC was a Colombian paramilitary group that was active from 1997 to 2006. The group was an amalgamation of several Colombian self-defense groups and carried out brutal kidnappings and assassinations.
The group was disbanded in 2006, but smaller groups and individuals continue to carry out attacks under its name, according to the Mapping Militants Project. The AUC was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. government in September 2001, and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization the following month, according to the Department of Justice.
“These designations make it a federal crime for Chiquita, a U.S. company, to provide funds to AUC,” the Justice Department said in a 2007 news release.
Under Chiquita’s plea agreement, the company was ordered to pay a $25 million fine, implement a compliance and ethics program, and agree to five years’ probation in 2007. The Department of Justice said that for several years between 1997 and February 2004, Chiquita paid AUCs in two Colombian regions where it had banana-producing operations: Uraba and Santa Marta.
According to the Justice Department, the company funneled these illegal payments through a Colombian subsidiary known as Vanadex, which by 2003 had become the company’s most profitable business.
The Justice Department said the company made payments to AUC through Vanadex on an approximately monthly basis for about six years, totaling more than $1.7 million in more than 100 payments. The company began working with AUC in 1997 after a meeting between then-AUC leader Carlos Castaño and senior Vanadex executives.
“Castaño implied that failure to make payments could result in physical harm to Vanadex employees and property,” the Justice Department said. “By September 2000, Chiquita’s senior executives knew the company was making payments to AUC, a violent paramilitary organization led by Carlos Castaño. Chiquita’s payments to AUC were reviewed and approved by the company’s senior leadership, including officials, directors, and employees.”
According to the Justice Department, the company made payments to AUC by check for several years until June 2002, when Chiquita began making payments directly to the company in cash. Some payments were recorded in corporate records as “security fees” even though Chiquita did not receive any actual security services from the payments.
By Hannah Phillips, Palm Beach Post; Reuters
