Cracking Down on Corporate Abuses Abroad

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:


Cracking Down on Corporate Abuses Abroad

The tangled relationships between American multinationals and Colombian paramilitary groups are coming under scrutiny in Colombia and in the United States.

Anastasia Moloney | September 13, 2007 | web only



In March, Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International, pled guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to making regular protection payments to Colombian right-wing paramilitary groups totaling some $1.7 million between 2001 and 2004.

The illegal payments were made, the company says, "to protect the lives of its employees," who had been threatened by leftist guerrillas in northwest Colombia where the fruit giant Chiquita Brands operated its subsidiary, Banadex.

This "excruciating dilemma," according to Chiquita, left the company with no alternative but to hand over more than 100 cash payoffs to paramilitary groups who have appeared on U.S. foreign terrorist hit lists since 2001 for engaging in sabotage, kidnapping, and the killing of civilians. Under the plea agreement, the District Court fined Chiquita $25 million for "Engaging in Transactions with a Specially-Designated Global Terrorist." Chiquita's guilty plea marks the first time that an American-based multinational has publicly admitted to making illegal payments to a terrorist organization

Chiquita became knowingly enmeshed in the complex dynamics of Colombia's internal armed conflict that pits government armed forces and illegally armed paramilitary groups against guerrilla groups.

Chiquita is likely to be the first of many U.S. based companies faced with charges of cooperating with paramilitaries abroad. Investigations into illegal business practices of American multinationals in Colombia and their alleged relationships with paramilitary groups are ongoing in both the United States, by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, and in Colombia by the attorney general.

Meanwhile, internationally connected trade unions, such as the United Steelworkers of America, are funding lawsuits in the United States against American corporations they believe have conspired with paramilitary groups to stifle trade union activity, and they claim has led to the killing of Colombian unionists. In Colombia it is an open secret that companies operating in areas controlled by an illegally armed group, be it the guerrillas or paramilitaries, are usually expected to make payments in exchange for protection and security. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=cracking_down_on_corporate_abuses_abroad

[Double T]

1. No wonder the price of bananas skyrocketed.