Market Forces

August 2, 2007

Headline and teaser at the Washington Post today:

Chiquita Sought Help From DOJ
Firm says it asked for advice on the legality of paying Colombian death squads in April 2003.

Surely they don’t really mean…

Roderick M. Hills, who had sought the meeting with former law firm colleague Michael Chertoff, explained that Chiquita was paying “protection money” to a Colombian paramilitary group on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations. Hills said he knew that such payments were illegal, according to sources and court records, but said that he needed Chertoff’s advice.

Oh! “protection money.” Like Mafia extortion. I see. That’s not quite so…no, wait…

Starting in 1997, according to court filings, Chiquita’s subsidiary in Colombia, Banadex, began making cash payments to AUC. The payments were suggested by AUC leader Carlos Castano, who said he planned to drive the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas — a group also on the U.S. terrorist list — out of the northwest region of Uraba, according to the filings.

In September 2000, Chiquita executives learned about the payments in an internal audit but allowed them to continue, according to a prosecution filing not disputed by the company. In the plea agreement, Chiquita officials said they knew that AUC was blamed for numerous killings and kidnappings in the region, but that they had no alternative to keep their workers alive and to secure their operations at a time when FARC guerrillas were blowing up railroads used by U.S. companies and kidnapping foreigners for ransom.

Chiquita was paying the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) so they could fight the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) who were blowing up infrastructure Chiquita depended on. Yearg. And the result?

[Columbian Attorney General Mario] Iguaran, whose office has been investigating Chiquita’s operations, said the company knew AUC was using payoffs and arms to fund operations against peasants, union workers and rivals. At the time of the payments, AUC was growing into a powerful army and was expanding across much of Colombia and, according to the Colombian government, its soldiers killed thousands before it began demobilizing.

Why on earth would Chiquita think this was appropriate?

But legal sources on both sides say there was a genuine debate within the Justice Department about the seriousness of the crime of paying AUC. For some high-level administration officials, Chiquita’s payments were not aiding an obvious terrorism threat such as al-Qaeda; instead, the cash was going to a violent South American group helping a major U.S. company maintain a stabilizing presence in Colombia.

In other words: as long as they’re our terrorists we can support them. So much for the Global War on Terror, I guess.

Posted in Terrorism, What The...?!?