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The Chiquita banana company has admitted paying protection money to Colombian paramilitary groups identified by the US government as terrorist organisations and agreed to pay a US$25 million ($35 million) fine.
Chiquita, one of the world's largest banana producers, had been accused by human rights groups who have complained for years that its bananas are "stained with blood" from the drug wars racking Colombia.
They have accused the company of paying paramilitary groups not only to protect its workers but also to target union leaders and other agitators perceived as going against the company's commercial interests.
The US Justice Department acknowledges that Chiquita is the most prominent, and possibly the only, US corporation found to have had business dealings with a terrorist group since September 11.
The Justice Department filed in federal court in Washington a document detailing the payments made to a group called the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, a violent right-wing group that has been designated by the US government as a foreign terrorist organization.
In all, the company made more than 100 payments to the group from 1997 through February 2004 totaling more than $1.7 million, according to the court document.
That included more than 50 payments exceeding $825,000 after the group was designated a foreign terrorist organization in September of 2001.
The payments were approved by senior executives at the Cincinnati-based company, according to the court documents.
Under the deal Chiquita will plea guilty to one charge of doing business with a terrorist group and face no immediate sanction other than the fine.
Chiquita itself insists that the only money it ever paid out was to protect the well-being of its workers. Once it realised its payments were in violation of new anti-terrorism laws, it made the decision in 2004 to disclose its payments and sell off its Colombian subsidiary.
Chiquita's chief executive, Fernando Aguirre, described the plea agreement as "a reasoned solution to the dilemma the company faced several years ago". Local human rights groups in Colombia have accused the company in the past of using the ports it controls to smuggle assault rifles and other weaponry into the country on behalf of the right-wing United Self-Defence Forces of Columbia, frequently described as a death squad.
Gloria Cuartas, the former mayor of Apartado in the heart of Chiquita banana country in Colombia, told CNN she was calling for a boycott of all Chiquita products.
- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS
