A Florida federal jury (USA) ruled this Monday that the banana multinational Chiquita Brands Internationalaccused of financing paramilitary groups in Colombia that left thousands dead in that country, will have to pay $38.3 million to plaintiffs and victims’ families.
The ruling of the civil trial in a West Palm Beach court, after a decade of litigation, indicates that Chiquita did not demonstrate that “the assistance it provided” to the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) to protect its employees from violence was the result of an “illegal, immediate and imminent threat” from this terrorist group.
He also did not achieve CIt is impossible to demonstrate that “he had no other reasonable alternative” than to “provide assistance to the AUC”according to the verdict to which EFE had access.
The ruling also states that Chiquita’s help to the AUC constituted “a dangerous activity” that increased the risk to community members beyond those hazards to which they were normally exposed.
For all this, The multinational is ordered to pay 38.3 million dollars to the plaintiffswho are survivors and relatives of victims of paramilitary violence in the 1990s and the beginning of this century, especially in the banana region of Urabá (Colombia).
Some of the plaintiffs are Víctor Palencia Gómez, father of Carlos Arturo Palencia Sibaja, who will receive 2.4 million dollars in compensation; or Janeth Rivera Vargas and Nini Johana Molina Rivera, wife and daughter, respectively, of Albeiro Antonio Molina Román, who will receive compensation of 2.1 million dollars, each.
Chiquita Brands Internationalwhich closed its Colombian operations in 2004, He admitted in 2007 in a New York court that he had paid Colombian paramilitaries $1.7 million, according to the company “under pressure.”
Chiquita’s lawyers had pointed out that the multinational had no choice but to pay nearly two million dollars to the AUC to protect its employees from violence.
The victims’ relatives maintained, on the contrary, that the fruit and vegetable company voluntarily associated with the AUC to protect its business, not the workers.
Thousands of victims’ families filed lawsuits against Chiquita.
After an investigation by the US Department of Justice, Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to financing paramilitaries in Colombia, but had failed to compensate families whose loved ones were murdered by the groups it financed.
At that time, The company reached a judicial settlement that resulted in a fine of 25 million dollars.
