The multinational Chiquita Brands was declared responsible for the alleged financing of the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) during the long civil war in this country and must pay 38.3 million dollars to 16 relatives of murdered people, according to a federal jury in Florida.
Monday’s verdict by a jury in West Palm Beach marks the first time the company has been found liable in any of multiple similar lawsuits pending in other U.S. courts, attorneys for the plaintiffs said.
It also marks a rare milestone in blaming a private American company for human rights abuses in other countries.
“This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations around the world: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished. These families, victims of armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process,” Marco Simons, general counsel of EarthRights International and attorney for one of the plaintiffs, said in a press release.
The jury in the case found in Monday’s verdict that Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to the AUC in the form of cash payments or other means of support, to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm.
Chiquita pleaded guilty in that case to paying protection money between 2001 and 2004, saying it did so to protect employees.
However, the men were killed by the AUC, the jury noted, and Chiquita failed to demonstrate that its support for the group was a result of the possibility of imminent harm to the company or its employees.
“The verdict does not return the husbands and sons who were murdered, but it sets the record straight and places responsibility for terrorist financing where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep,” said Agnieszka Fryszman of the law firm Milstein Sellers & Toll. , which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
what he is acussed?
According to court documents, Chiquita paid the AUC about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004. The group is blamed for the murders of thousands of people during those years.
Chiquita has insisted that its Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, only made the payments out of fear that the AUC would harm its employees and operations, court records show.
In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to a U.S. criminal charge of engaging in transactions with a foreign terrorist organization (the AUC was designated as such by the State Department in 2001) and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. According to the Department of Justice, the company was also required to implement a compliance and ethics program.
“The situation in Colombia was tragic for many,” Chiquita, whose banana operations are based in Florida, said in a statement after the verdict. “However, that does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these claims.”
The verdict came after a six-week trial and two days of deliberations. The EarthRights case was originally filed in July 2007 and was combined with several other lawsuits.
[Con información de Reuters y AP]
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