Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Corporate Death Squads Come Back to Haunt U.S. Companies
A federal judge recently refused to dismiss a civil suit filed against Chiquita which charges that the company paid leftist (FARC) guerrillas operating near its plantations in Columbia -- during a period when the FARC killed four American missionaries, according to CNN.
The company's position -- which it has held consistently since it voluntarily disclosed the payments to the Department of Justice -- has been that both left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries forced the company in an extortionate manner to make the payments "to protect the lives of its employees."
But that's become an increasingly untenable position -- especially since some of the same paramilitaries who took the payments have come in from the cold, disarming and submitting to Columbia's "Justice and Peace" process -- which allows them to receive reduced jail time for confessing to all of their terrorist crimes. The problem for Chiquita -- and now for Dole (and potentially for Del Monte) -- is that the confessions reveal a much different story.
One of the ex-paramilitaries -- Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo (aka "Carlos Tijeras") -- was the former commander of the William Rivas Front of the United Defense Forces ("AUC") -- the group that operated in northern Columbia, in the zone where the companies and their suppliers grew bananas. In a sworn statement Tijeras described the AUC's relationship with the multinational banana companies as "an open public relationship" involving everything from "security services" to the kidnapping and extrajudicial assassination of labor leaders fingered by the companies as "security problems."
Tijeras' statement -- which reads like the confessions of a corporate death squad leader and directly refutes his paymasters' version of events -- has now been entered into the record in a case filed against Dole last April in California by attorneys with Conrad and Scherer:
"I've been told that Chiquita has asserted that they paid the AUC funds, but that this was coerced and was a form of extortion. I have also heard that Dole claims to have never paid us any funds. Both of these assertions are absolutely false. In fact, my agreement with Chiquita and Dole was to provide them with total security and other services."
Tijeras is not a lone whistleblower by any means. Salvatore Mancuso, the overall commander of the AUC, also testified in early 2008 that Dole and Del Monte, like Chiquita, had been providing major support to the AUC since its inception. He repeated the accusation to "60 Minutes," which originally aired the segment in September, 2008.
According to these and other witnesses as well as investigators familiar with the bloody history of Columbia, the AUC was originally hired by the companies to drive the leftist FARC guerillas out of the banana-growing region and protect their plantations from "the gangs of common delinquents that robbed their supplies and equipment." (Tijeras) Once the FARC was vanquished and order restored, the banana companies continued to pay the AUC to "pacify" their work force, suppress the labor unions and terrorize peasant squatters seeking their own competing land claims.
Tijeras: "After we restored order and became the local agents of law enforcement, managers for Chiquita and Dole plantations relied upon us to respond to their complaints...We would also get calls from the Chiquita and Dole plantations identifying specific people as "security problems" or just "problems." Everyone knew that this meant we were to execute the identified person. In most cases those executed were union leaders or members or individuals seeking to hold or reclaim land that Dole or Chiquita wanted for banana cultivation, and the Dole or Chiquita administrators would report to the AUC that these individuals were suspected guerillas or criminals."
According to Tijeras, for years the companies provided up to 90% of the AUC's income.
When a case was filed by the families and heirs of dozens of victims against Dole this past April (2009), the company immediately rejected the charges as "baseless allegations" that "are the product of the most untrustworthy sources imaginable" and "nothing more than the false confessions of convicted terrorists from Columbia, who had every motive to lie about their activities in order to minimize their jail time."
(The plaintiffs' complaint is a horrific litany of summary executions, off-the-bus abductions, forced-entry murders and kidnappings, ghoulish disappearances and other crimes committed against trade unionists and land reform activists.)
Of course Dole is correct to refer to the AUC as "terrorists" -- a designation that the U.S. State Department assigned to the group (coincidentally) on September 10, 2001. But if the payments are proven, then, as Chiquita learned, the consequences will be harsh: Payments to designated terrorists are illegal -- whether coerced or not -- and whether or not the company is cognizant or indifferent to the consequences.
As mentioned, Chiquita pleaded guilty in March 2007 after voluntarily disclosing the payments, and ended up agreeing to pay a $25 million criminal fine for violating U.S. antiterrorism laws. The Chiquita criminal case was remarkable for numerous reasons, not least because the company continued to make the payments against the advice of its own outside counsel, and even AFTER notifying the Justice Department.
As part of that settlement, Chiquita acknowledged that it had also made payments to the FARC from 1989 to at least 1997 -- the period when the missionaries were abducted and killed. Now the families are suing Chiquita under the civil provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991, which allows American citizens and their heirs to be compensated for injuries resulting from international terrorism.
Meanwhile, an "independent" review commissioned by the company's board reinforced Chiquita's claim that its sole motivation was to protect the lives of its employees -- from both the FARC and the AUC.
That report may help deflect derivative lawsuits filed by the company's own shareholders, but the conclusion won't pass the laugh test in Columbia, where attorney general Mario Iguaran has roundly rejected Chiquita's explanation and reportedly threatened to extradite as many as eight Chiquita executives (including John Paul Olivo, Charles Dennis Keiser and Dorn Robert Wenninger) who he says were responsible for approving the payments and maintaining a "criminal relationship" with the paramilitaries.
Another remarkable thing about the Chiquita case is the fact that its attorney at the time is now the U.S. Attorney General.
When he was Chiquita's attorney, Eric Holder told the Washington Post that it would be unfair to treat any company "harshly" that voluntarily discloses payments to designated terrorists, and that if the company is penalized, the individuals within the firm should not be. Yet just a few years before he first passed through the revolving door, when he was Deputy Attorney General, Holder himself had authored a famous corporate crime policy memo (known as the "Holder Memo") which suggested that the "prosecution of a corporation is not a substitute for the prosecution of criminally culpable individuals within or without the corporation."
At this point you'd think Holder would automatically and very publicly recuse himself from any decision concerning the requested extradition of Chiquita execs (would the U.S. tolerate it if a government official tied to the cartels blocked an extradition request?) or any other matter related to the investigation of multinational complicity in violence in Columbia.
Maybe it's time for Congress to peel away any doubts. Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA), chair of the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, launched an investigation into U.S. multinationals' complicity with human rights violations in Columbia back in 2007 with a hearing in which witnesses testified about a pattern of multinational complicity with Columbian terrorists -- including the Alabama-based Drummond Co., Inc., which allegedly paid members of a Colombian terrorist group to kill three union organizers. (Drummond denies all of the allegations that have been made against the company and its employees by attorneys working for relatives of murdered Drummond employees, even while the Miami Herald reported just days before the hearing that paramilitaries had also come forward to talk in detail about payments Drummond made to the paramilitaries).
Other companies with operations in Columbia that were mentioned at Delahunt's hearing include Occidental, CocaCola and ExxonMobil
Attorney General Eric Holder is the nation's top cop, overseeing a department that we are regularly reminded has fighting terrorism (and presumably punishing those Americans who aid and abet it here or abroad) as its top priority - so it's worth asking where the Department's investigation is regarding companies like Dole, which unlike Chiquita won't volunteer any facts, and patently deny any allegations - when there is so much obvious evidence pointing their way.
To learn more about the situation in Columbia and other countries check out The Banana Land Campaign and International Rights Advocates.
57 Comments so far
Show AllCorporate persons don't get tried for murder. Just the latest injustice endorsed by the FSA.
-"When he was Chiquita's attorney, Eric Holder told the Washington Post that it would be unfair to treat any company "harshly" that voluntarily discloses payments to designated terrorists, and that if the company is penalized, the individuals within the firm should not be."
Anyone heard any news about how Obama's justice dept. is progressing on the "torture memo" file? I hope John Yoo isn't treated too "harshly"!! But of course to give Obama credit, it is a lot to ask that he "look back" at Holder's past before making him the head of the justice dept.
How's that hope and change coming along?
One wonders how long it will take SCOTUS to issue a ruling that torturing and killing people is a 'free expression' right of corporate personhood.
sierra7
Sorry, but this isn't "business as usual"
This is INTERNATIONAL MURDER!
More, "Bitter Fruit" from the most infamous corporatists that have covered the face of the poor in Latin America since Pizzaro.......
I seem to recall in my failing memory, a case in Cincinnati, then Chiquita's Corp headquarters, in which a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter laid out the whole sick operation. He was rewarded for his investigative diligence by being prosecuted in Federal court for "theft of internal memos", found guilty and sentenced to prison. The Enquirer paid millions to its former owner, Carl Lidner, then CEO of Chiquita. Now 20 some years later we finally have the story surface again. Bet you money that nobody lays a glove on the real decision makers.
Yeah, I recall that whole sordid memory-holed episode. I was living in nearby Lexington at the time.
No USAn careed about that stuff. USans have no moral convictions aside from a bizarre concern about human embrios, none, zero.
What Holder did is what lawyers always do. Lawyers are analogous to hit men who take money to kill someone. Nothing personal, just a job.
James Baker defended the Saudi Royal Family from law suits filed by survivng family members of people who where killed on 9/11. The Supreme Court is turning over the U.S. Government to corporations. No wonder the corporatists want to limit corporate liability. Doing business now-a-days is murder!
sierra7
"Don't forget the Cannolli"!!!!!!!
Jacobo Arbenz became the democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1951, winning 65% of the vote. In 1952 Arbenz announced an Agrarian Reform Program which threatened to nationalize the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Banana). Faced with the reforms of a socialist democracy, the corporation sought American intervention.
The democratically elected, progressive government of Guatemala was overthrown in 1954 by a CIA-organized and funded coup. The pretense for this assault on democracy was the alleged, ubiquitous threat of Soviet takeover when, in fact, Russia had no interest in the country. They did not even maintain diplomatic relations.
This act of U.S. terrorism resulted in one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century. A forty year reign of terror ensued, eight years of which was supported by the Reagan administration. This was a period of torture, military-government death squads, mass executions, disappearances and inconceivable cruelty resulting in the extermination of at least 200,000 civilians.
In 1982 Reagan went to visit General Efrain Rios Montt, possibly the worst of the military dictators, who had slaughtered the Guatemalan Indians and peasants indiscriminately. Montts’ actions had won him global condemnation. After meeting with the butcher, Regan stated that the general was getting “a bad deal”.
The history of these and other such interventions can be read in William Blums "Killing Hope".
People have to realize that these tactics have been ongoing for over 100 years. It did not Start with The Reagan Presidency. It is not "Republican" or "Democratic" Foreign Policy. It is the Policy of the Governmnet of the United States of America on behalf of the Corporations.
All of this was done in conjunction with the "Myth Making" Industry that was Hollywood and The Media wherein through all this butchery , torture and theft, the United States of America proclaimed itself as the cradle of all Justice and Liberty.
"People have to realize that these tactics have been ongoing for over 100 years. It did not Start with The Reagan Presidency. It is not "Republican" or "Democratic" Foreign Policy. It is the Policy of the Governmnet of the United States of America on behalf of the Corporations."
Once the longstanding, very evil history of the US federal government and its corporate allies is understood as fact not fancy, and one knows about the Operation Northwoods plan, then when evidence of nano-thermite in World Trade Center dust is published in a peer reviewed paper, it becomes clear that the opening shot taken by the US federal government in its War OF Terror was aimed at those very towers in Manhatten on 9/11/2001. The report linking that document and other recent coverage of the 9/11 Truth Movement by non-USA national public and corporate media is available here, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17624
The nano-thermite evidence clinches the Who is Responsible for me. And when combined with the fact that the Anthrax was from US military stock, the conclusion is chilling but not really unsurprising or unexpected because of the mass of history I know. It's also clear that the planning was carried out during Clinton's reign, with BushCo just executing the plan.
It's kinda hard to write much after that.
Right on, Karlof. And thanks for the link. Globalresearch is a good, serious site, but I often don't have the time to check up on them.
These tactics have been going on since the first europeans laid eyes on the "new world". Regan was just another in a long line of enablers.
I merely recounted this particular episode since it has a direct link to Chiquita. I am painfully aware of the heinous history of amerikan "interventions", particularly in nations that show signs of becoming successful socialist democracies.
Socialism, in any form, can not be allowed to succeed. It's not the sort of new world order our masters have in mind.
I have "Killing Hope" on my hard drive in my PDF book collection. "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein is also a source which informs on this subject.
Surely one day we will learn to properly spell the names of other countries.
Yeah, for a couple of minutes I was wondering how the FARC all this stuff could be going on in Columbia, South Carolina-- and when they re-opened the "plantations"!
HuffPo must use an automated "edit-check" system.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Hymenaea, Quite right too; I, for one, am tired of seeing various spellings like Austria and Australia when everyone knows they are the same country.
Between the evils of Chiquita and Dole, I don't buy any bananas that are Chiquita or Dole -- which means I don't buy any bananas at all because it's danged hard to find bananas that don't have blood on them belonging to one of those two.
I'm gonna have to insist that Wilbur shop at the farmer's market and buy seasonal fruits and vegetables. Why should we eat so many bananas anyway? From now on, it's fair trade and organic produce for us. We have to help create a world where people are no longer exploited or killed for our convenience.
The famous Mister Ed
Francis the Talking Mule says you're gonig to have to add more to your list than agricultural products--a lot more.
Be real careful Mr. Ed. Both Chiquita and Dole have "USDA organic" bananas. I was buying them until I read this report. We must make sure our products come from fair trade producers and growers. They're more expensive but we're pretty sure tnat the workers are paid a living wage.
Corporations don't make it simple.
Mr. Cray,
You mentioned the word Columbia 11 times in your article. Are you referring to the country of COLOMBIA?
Yes, I think so. Remember that Plan Colombia was hatched in the District of Columbia.
Surely you mean Depravity Central.
the Time will come when CORPORATIONS in the USA - especially those with close ties to Congress, the Courts, and arms and security industries
will use "private security" forces for far MORE than just guarding the "gates" of corporations and businesses...it will be used right in the workplaces and even beyond them against employees - towards intimidation and "compliance" which will include to work harder, faster, longer and above all to obey "company policies" such as "not to discuss company policies" ..."discuss the company in such a way as to negatively impact the company"...
just watch -- it is going to happen -- quite....openly.
teddy--Such was done by the Pinkertons during the last three decades of the 1800s, and at various locales--coal mines mostly-- by other agents during the 1900s.
Thank you for the reminder Karlof1.
i may have come across reading about those times, such as when corporations used the police and related "legal entities" as a way of putting down "rebellions" among the labor community.
what seems to be developing in the USA is the insinuation into every interstice of society - through the working society itself in terms of "workplace rules" in which a fascistic order is imposed :
employees being subtly harassed with not-so-veiled "consequences" such as lay-offs for supposed poor performance such as "insubordination" (itself a very, very poisonous concept because it can be very broadly defined BY administrations such as merely an employee questioning certain work practices that are actually harmful - under the umbrella of "enjoined not to discuss company policies")
this is where the US corporate culture is VERY , VERY clever in masking what are really fascistic practices under the umbrella of "private business LEGAL right to run" the business.
Teddy, I have this fantasy where every citizen is responsible for remembering some period and aspect of history so that they can bring that knowledge to discussions of how things are and what can be done. Possibly by random selection a particular decade could be assigned to each of us beginning in school. Possibly some progress in learning this decade could be a requirement in every academic degree, from high school to PHD. Learning this time period and aspect in detail would be an act of citizenship worthy of respect. As so much of history is affected by what occurred earlier and affects what comes later all these slices of history are linked together and we would all end up learning the basic outline. A population that is aware of the past will be harder to control because they will be able to remember what occurred and what the consequences were. And a population with a broad yet specialized grounding in the past will be able to think, recognize old patterns and see new ones. They will become able to talk about and compare the past with the present. And the masking of fascistic practices under corporate culture would be more difficult.
There's a problem limiting learning to just one decade as context is often lost because causes are often long in making themselves apparent plus behaviors are often repeated, sometimes under another guise so they look new, as teddy and I point-out. Unfortunately, it takes years of very dedicated study to learn the true history of just the US Empire, years that then becomes lifelong, as I can attest.
I agree with you in that one needs to understand the whole to understand the particular. Obviously one must learn much more to understand and focus on the decade, but by giving everyone a particular focus on the past to be responsible for the task of learning the past can be spread out and we all must learn the general history in order to understand how our particular focus fits in and to be able to discuss it with people who have other decades and focus'. By sharing the load of understanding history we can have far more minds applied to the past and history can be communicated to citizens by citizens and more directly and accurately than through Hollywood productions and other media sources.
RandB--Thanks for your reply. "By sharing the load of understanding history we can have far more minds applied to the past and history can be communicated to citizens by citizens and more directly and accurately than through Hollywood productions and other media sources."
This is essentially what I try to do here at CommonDreams and the few other sites I visit. I perticularly try to put current events in their historical context, which helps understanding of the event and shows why history ought to be important for people to learn.
Sounds a little like the end of Bradbury's FARENHEIT 451. A bit naive, with all the noble instructors walking back into the center of town right after the nuclear blast, but hey, it was 1945.
See Blackwater/Xe involvement post-Katrina, the property grabs thereafter, and the dissembling of civil services in and around New Orleans.
The way we live our lives engenders the forces that free us or bind us when we pass through from this world.
Beasts in life : Beasts in death.
The WHEEL that turns in the Here turns in the After.
Chiquita, nee United Fruit, was George HW Bush's old company. (Cheney ran Occidental)
What is the statute of limitations on ordering the contract killings of union organizers?
I have avoided products from both Dole and Chiquita since the overthrow of the democracy of Honduras.
There's no statute of limitations for murder or conspiracy to commit murder, just as there is none for torture or other crimes against humnaity.
To ppeters---
Your failing memory has the story right but about a decade off, and I remember it well. The reporter was Mike Gallagher, accused of illegally obtaining Chiquita e-mails, and the Cincinnati Enquirer renounced its own huge investigative story and paid Chiquita $11 million without a lawsuit ever being filed. It was 1998.
See, for a serious journalist's fascinating blow-by-blow of the case:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=543
The case bears a remarkable similarity to the Dan Rather/60 Minutes debacle where just before the Presidential election Rather had exposed how Dubya had ducked his military obligations, then CBS recanted the story, NOT because it wasn't true, but because some of the documentation was/appeared to be faked. (I think Rather just lost his suit for around the same amount, $11 million, via a SCOTUS decision that received very little press... Cross it and the U.S. will eat its own in a heartbeat. Recall that it was Rather who "sneaked into" Afghanistan during the Reagan years to report dramatically from the Front how those "Freedom Fighters" were defeating the Soviets? You'd have thought he was Edward R. Murrow reporting from London during the Blitz---and that's precisely who he thought he was emulating.)
Meanwhile, as for eating Chiquita and Dole bananas, Americans eat more bananas than any other single fruit. They are really cheap (and the article enabling this thread helps explain why!). But if the global corporations that produce them are willing to hire hit squads to keep their workers in line, what chemicals are they putting in the bananas?
Do you trust your government to tell you?
As for Attny. General Eric Holder, when he was named by Obama, I knew I'd heard that name before. Now I know why. It's becoming clear that there is a new phenomenon in the U.S. that may be part of what pisses off the Tea Baggers: you no longer have to be white to game the system! (Who was that Harlem Congressman they ran out of D.C. back in the late 50s...?)
-30-
Without stating the obvious if making payments to terrorist groups is illegal what will happen to the US military and contractors because of their payments to the Taliban to cease attacking their supply trains? You don't sippose that these will just be swept under the rug like the war crimes of Bush and Cheney do you?
Maybe if it should come up in an official investigation the defense will conveniently be that the Taliban are freedom fighters not terrorists. Sometimes the truth can be useful.
The sleezy, murderous underbelly of Corporatism.
Unobtainium.
CORP IS BORG.
excerpt from the article:
"A federal judge recently refused to dismiss a civil suit filed against Chiquita which charges that the company paid leftist (FARC) guerrillas operating near its plantations in Columbia -- during a period when the FARC killed four American missionaries, according to CNN."
=============
Let us hope that this Federal Judge is remembering True Ethics , Truth, and Justice...if nothing more than to show that even in the USA's rapid-transit towards Fascism....
there are STILL a "few good men".
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
How long before corporate death squads and brown shirts are in the streets in Amurka?
Horst Wessel Song (auf English)
The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!
SA march with calm, firm steps.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit in our ranks.
Clear the streets for the brown battalions,
Clear the streets for the stormtroopers!
Already millions look with hope to the swastika
The day of freedom and bread is dawning!
Roll call has sounded for the last time
We are all already prepared for the fight!
Soon Hitler's flag will fly over all streets.
Our servitude will soon end!
The flag high! The ranks tightly closed!
SA marches with a calm, firm pace.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit in our ranks.
Banana of the temperate zone: Paw Paw, growing wild in a forest near you.
I've never seen a paw-paw tree north of the Mason-Dixon line. A couple summers ago we encountered a several-acre pure thicket of them on the river bottom in Smoke-Hole Gorge, West Virginia. They weren't ripe, and we didn't know at the time that they ripen fine off the tree, or we would have picked a bunch of them.
Perhaps it is part of the corporate free speech now enshrined in law. Corporations don't kill people, they pay people to kill people. Plausible deniability is great. Where was the CIA, were they too busy somewhere else? Snark.
where there's smoke, Helix: Chiquita involvement does not mean that the CIA were not involved but that they were.
The corporation - designed for "limited liability" in which humans are not responsible for the acts of the corporation, and the corporation is not accountable in any human way - must be abolished.
The corporations involved in the oppression of Latin America are ugly, and their bosses and lawyers and US sponsors are specifically criminal. But the legal fiction of "limited liability" INEVITABLY promotes escalating criminal behavior.
How do i live in a society ruled by the corporate model?
In resistance to the corporation, in support of businesses and relationships that are accountable to the communities in which they operate.
Where do i work? Where do i shop? Where do i live? Where do i focus, literally, my LIFE ENERGY?
With limited liability humans are still responsible for the the acts of the corporation, its just that the responsibility has moved up from the owners and the directors of the corporations to the citizens and government of the country that granted the limited liability to those corporations and allowed them to continue to do business while murdering, stealing, polluting, and all the other things that they do without being responsible for. Collectively we gave them the "limited liability" and become collectively responsible for the murders. Is there any movement to take away the "limited liability" of these corporations who abuse the privileged status given to them by the citizens of the country through their governing bodies? We are the accomplices to the murders, the stealing, the polluting, . . . We are guilty and it is time we admit that and take responsibility for our sins of omission.
doubled comment somehow, 2nd removed.
What was the latest figure of proposed U.S. Military Bases in Columbia? If memory serves me, it was 7 or 8.
Gee, do you think that some of them might be located near Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte or other major U.S. companies? And if so, will our military protect them at no cost to them but only to taxpayers? How difficult would it be to engage the military when the U.S. calls just about everyone a terrorist when it suits their corporate/military agenda?