Chiquita Exec: Our Support for Terrorism Doesn’t Kill People
In an inevitable development, the families of people killed by FARC in Colombia are suing Chiquita for arming the terrorists. And in spite of the fact that the sentencing memorandum in their settlement with the government made it clear that Chiquita did support FARC from 1989 to 1997, Chiquita’s lawyer claims that the company’s support for terrorists had nothing to do with the effects–including murders–of that terrorism.
Chiquita officials disagree. In a telephone interview, Mr. Loyd said that the lawsuit’s assertion that Chiquita armed FARC rebels was “categorically untrue” and that the company would “vigorously defend” itself against the accusations.
Gary Osen, one of several lawyers for the plaintiffs, said his clients’ lawsuit — along with at least four others accusing Chiquita of complicity in killings carried out by the rebel groups — would be brought under the civil provision of the antiterrorism law.
The law states that any United States national “injured in his or her person, property, or business by reason of an act of international terrorism” can sue for damages in any appropriate federal court “and shall recover threefold the damages he or she sustains and the cost of the suit, including attorney’s fees.”
[snip]
He said Chiquita was just one of many companies doing business in Colombia that paid “protection money” to rebel groups, the price of doing business in a notoriously violent country.
Ms. Julin said she and the others who lost their husbands to FARC do not see it that way.
“Chiquita was there to make money and fund these people,” she said. “How could anybody be involved in something like this without regard to the human lives lost?”
This (and the others associated with it) will be an interesting suit. I look forward to the executives who knowingly supported terrorism for over a decade arguing that support for terrorists is just a business expense.
Update: Terrorisms changed to terrorists per Frank Probst.
Update: I think Hugh’s auditioning to be Chiquita’s spokesperson.
It’s not bananas that kill people. It’s people with bananas that do.
“He said Chiquita was just one of many companies doing business in Colombia that paid “protection money” to rebel groups, the price of doing business in a notoriously violent country.”
Uh huh. Just like IG Farben was just one of many companies doing business in Nazi Germany, who could have foreseen what they were going to do with all that Zyklon B the Nazis bought from Farben?
Chiquita (United Fruit Co.) had the US (CIA) over through a duly elected government in Guatemala in 1954(?)and installing a Military dictatorship leading to massive human rights violations. Chiquita, another fine example of Neo Liberal capitalism at work. Well at least we get our bananas.
“Oh yeah? You want us to start doing business in places where we can operate without funding terrorism? That would mean you paying an extra 50 CENTS per banana! Booga booga booga! The free market cannot be impinged! Um, on!”
/Chiquita executive
Funny how relative is the term “terrorist”. Chiquita can fund terrorists, who murder, uh, keep order in order that Chiquita can keeping paying virtually nothing to bring its fruit to market. But a lawyer who represents a terrorist, or a donor to a charity that helps someone who a bureaucrat in the bowels of Foggy Bottom later defines as a terrorist, is guilty of illegally supporting terrorism. Nice work if you can get it. Thankfully, Bush’s term as a public employee – the longest he’s ever held any job – will shortly be over.
As was said in a different context, “Southern trees bear strange fruit indeed”.
BushWorld;Not a fun place to visit and you sure don’t want to live there.
Chiquita is quite accustomed to defending itself from lawsuits brought by poor people. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands of banana workers in Central America have had lawsuits going for years against the company. The company made workers handle pesticides and pesticide-laden fruit that caused cancers and other serious health problems.
NAFTA essentially cut off independent Carribean banana growers to the benefit of Chiquita. Chiquita is a big, well-connected player and a real m*therf**ker of an outfit.
Heh. The ex-head of Chiquita works in the WH with W…one of his closest advisors (possibly more powerful than Rove)..can’t remember his name off the top of my head though…
Line 2: I think “terrorisms” should be “terrorists”.
I really don’t see how Chiquita has much of a defense here. I suspect that their bean counters are already figuring out how much it’ll cost them to settle, because they really can’t afford to go to trial and risk being labeled as a company that gives money to terrorists. Which means that their accountants are likely trying to figure out how many people FARC can kill before it starts to have a big impact on Chiquita’s bottom line.
OT
Harper’s “The Gathering Storm at Justice” is Scott Horton’s recent article about former US Attorney John McKay’s Seattle University Law Review article “Train Wreck at the Justice Department.”
Horton predicts Inspector General Glenn Fine’s OPR investigation report, due out this Spring, “…will almost certainly be explosive.”
I loves me some Scott Horton but unfortunately he engages in a lot of wishful thinking.
Can we get an advanced copy?
OT
Someone on Kos is saying Nacchio is getting a new trial and judge, per the denver post
Here’s a link from CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23676552
I like your new term “terrorisms” it really fits the generalized nature of the xenophobia and the various forms that are all connected to some brown person, over there, and here in our very backyard!
I would like to use that as the most apt description of the American Freakout over fake terrorism if I may?
Bummer. I fixed it. I’m in a very distracting hall, but I did correct it.
This seems to riff on an old NRA slogan:
It’s not bananas that kill people. It’s people with bananas that do.
I thought I remembered the Chertoff connection (and there it is, in EW’s earlier post at TNH).
The Colombian adventures are worrisome to us too since our own dear leader seems very keen to make all the wrong kinds of friends there lately. I hope that we haven’t been subcontracted.
Also I believe it wasn’t the FARC but rightwing death squads that Chiquita was funding.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14810
Well, as Marcy says in her earlier post at TNH, Chiquita were doing equal-opportunity terrorism support over the years, depending on who was on which list when.
First FARC, then AUC. I’m actually more interested in the AUC suits, bc it will involve discovery that gets rather close to the US’ support of AUC.
Here too is my entry on Chiquita from my scandals list:
Please tell me they are going to add Chertoff, individually, as a party. I have to think it was ultra vires for him to tell Chiquita to keep providing material support to the terrorists.
Chertoff wouldn’t be part of the FARC-related case, though.
12 – I wonder too at how explosive any of it might be, except that Horton has over and over downplayed that anything will come of, for example, the OPR investigations – so I don’t think he only has rose colored glasses.
I found this.
http://counterterrorismblog.or…..rtment.php
The difference between payments to the FARC and the ELN on the one hand and to the AUC on the other is that only payments to the AUC were made at a time when that organization had been designated as terrorist in nature.
Right, but that doesn’t prevent people from suing Chiquita for it. Yes, it’s probably going to be easier to win a suit for funding AUC (and I’ll enjoy it more, too), since we know Chiquita also broke the law. But the FARC case is going to be much tougher on Chuquita from a PR standpoint, since FARC has gotten such bad press of late.
24 – there are going to AUC suits too though, aren’t there (see 22 “I’m actually more interested in the AUC suits,”) or is that just hopefully but not definitely there will be AUC suits?
what ?? we’re not having DOJ sieze their funds and their assests .. for “material support of a terrorist organization” ..
there’s another corporation breaking the law with impunity .. or immunity by default of non-prosecution ..
if we take the usual route the bottom line is every time you pruchase a chiquita .. you’re helping to fund terrorism..it’s simple matter of a consumer boycott imo .. i’m not going to buy a single chiquita frfom hence forward .. i invite y’all to join me ..
i’ve got not one problem with eating carribean bananas .. “bring ‘em on ” ..
To those writing this Blog, I’m glad to have found this site and look forward to enjoying my time here.
“Chiquita did support FARC from 1989 to 1997”
This whole subject about Chiquita and their involvement with the FARC group as an issue is really the tip of a huge iceberg. I say that because I was in a family starting in the mid to later 70’s who joined a huge Crime System not long after marrying. Their business is Real Estate Development and they were to launder Drug and Gun Running money straight into property using big Banks with Mortgage Fraud techniques to bury ownership. The Gun Running part has already been in the news with Chiquita and Drummond, but I know of others who were involved. What many don’t know is that both these companies and others were also distributing huge amounts of drugs to other areas of the World. “The family” as I’ll refer to them, where busy laundering money during that time.
Hence, as far as I’m concerned, Chiquita and the others were involved in something much more than what they have claimed to be involved in. And frankly, this again is part of something else even much larger than what they were doing.
I’m going to jump a few decades and say that in the 90’s at my house, my wife’s family including her oldest brother’s wife’s family came over to visit. This included “Clyde O’Connor” who in September of last year was caught with a jet plane with Ton’s of Cocaine. It was during the gathering at my house that my older brother-in-law and Clyde with me standing with them started discussing getting into this business.
Narco News just released an investigative article on the Drug Planes. Please read: U.S. Cocaine-Plane Invasion Spooking Latin America
Trail of Evidence Points to Major Covert Operation Targeting Venezuela
http://narconews.com/Issue51/article3031.html
Also there are a few other investigators working on similar projects. See Madcow Morning news
http://www.madcowprod.com/
Daniel Hopsicker
Everyone has been looking for Clyde and they want to know where he got the money from to seed the business. My ex-brother-in-law is his money man and there’s still a lot more!
Another important tidbit is that the family often bragged about being in “The World’s Largest Criminal System”. And they also said they were “CIA Assets”. At the time I didn’t know what that meant but I know now! It’s important to realize that “the family” isn’t the only family involved as there are many others. This is a huge operation and involves many people.
Because I’m limited with time today, I’ll add more tomorrow.
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
Part II
There are actually so many parts and areas to this that it’s almost overwhelming to try to understand when it’s explained to someone. Another part that I found to be important is in understanding how people get involved along with how this Crime system operates. This allowed me personally to understand how “the Family” got involved and others are seduced probably in the same fashion.
It’s important to remember that I was in my mid-20’s when married into this family. I was also an Engineer which didn’t prepare me with seeing what was coming. It’s also clear the family didn’t know either as you will see….
We were together for more than 3 years before deciding to get married. It was very shortly after our wedding date that my wife wanted us to quickly visit her father as he was very sick. Since I just saw him a week ago and to hear he was really sick really surprised me. On the way to visit, my wife told me that he’s sick because someone is trying to kill him! Frankly I didn’t know what to say as what do I know about this sort of thing anyway?
Arriving, yes he was very different and seemed really upset. My wife asked about the Police and we learned they were just there. All I could do was offer my compassion and support. But not more than a few weeks later, my wife wanted us to visit again because another attempt on his life had happened. And again, like before he was terribly upset and all I could do was offer my support. Finally a few weeks later, we were off and running to visit again because there was another attempt, but this time I asked my wife a few questions.
Since her father was a successful Real Estate Developer his money would be expected to be his, in his accounts is what I thought. She had told me that her father was wealthy and they were after his money earlier. But I wondered if his money was already in his bank accounts, which was briefly explained earlier, how could they get his money? So I asked my wife on the way to his house this third time, “It’s confusing to think that anyone would want to kill him for his money if his money is in his bank accounts, so is it possible to think that your father may be doing something to these people causing them to want to harm your father?” She didn’t say anything.
Some time afterwards, the family wanted to me to help by quitting my job and using one of my rifles to stand guard inside the house all through the night? Luckily I was able to graciously back out of that one. But it was clear later that her father wasn’t able to sleep and was having other problems dealing with what ever was happening to him.
Moving up a few years when my oldest brother-in-law graduated and the father came out of retirement wanting to restart his Real Estate Developing business again. While shopping around for construction loans, they felt that the Banks were charging too much, so why not start your own Bank? That was when the father gathered two of his friends to form a partnership and start their own Bank. It was called Dempster Plaza Bank in Niles Illinois.
Not long after the Bank was operational, the FDIC came in and closed the Bank until a special meeting was held with the ownership. The next day my wife’s father and the other owners learned that someone in the Bank had given an uncovered loan with an amount that far exceeded the assets of the Bank. That meant that either the ownership would have to reseed the Bank with more funds or the Bank would soon go under. This was in the later 70’s.
You can only imagine how upset the family was and how upset the father and his son were. We used to grimace when thinking of visiting but we did anyway and made our visit short.
Her oldest brother knew of a group through his circle of business friends who specialized in investigations, is what I was told. They hired this group to get the facts of what really happened. Not more than a few weeks later, the father learned that it was the Bank President, son of one of the owners, who made the loan. How this next step happened isn’t known but not long after that, the father and brother were talked into hiring the same group who did the investigation to murder the Bank President. Then maybe a few months later, we were summoned to the father’s house one by one because they wanted to study our response with viewing the obituary notice. I can’t describe how weird this was as I wasn’t told it was murder and all I could do was pick up on all the strange behavior around me. Because they were intensely studying me I felt threatened and tried to play along. Later my wife explained how he died in the car accident as we were on our way home. And years later the family admitted to committing murder. More on the Profiling later…..
Looking back, in my view the family was set up. “How” is going to surprise you. Remember that some time had passed from when someone was pursuing the father with wanting to harm him. This Crime system specializes in building profiles on their targets. They work hard at learning everything they can about their target to allow them to be successful with winning them over. The victim never knows they are being setup either until a long time has passed where they learn how the group works. By then, it far too late – or maybe it isn’t? This depends upon individual strengths with recognizing their boundaries and needing to do the right thing. Everyone makes mistakes but those who work to hide their mistakes to keep going are scorned when caught.
It was their commitment to commit murder that sealed the deal with them joining in the Crime System. From that point on, the mannerism and culture within the family changed to become really bad and scary. Remember, they started with laundering Drug and Gun Running Money straight into Property for this group.
No one is going to believe what I have to say tomorrow!
More tomorrow……
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL