The banana giant Chiquita Brands International, declared responsible for financing the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) by a jury in the United States, announced this Tuesday that will appeal the decision.
“Although we are disappointed by this ruling“We remain confident that our legal position will ultimately prevail,” the American company said in a statement sent to AFP.
In its verdict Monday, a jury convened by a federal court in Florida ordered Chiquita to compensate the families of eight people murdered by the AUC with $38.3 millionresponsible for hundreds of other deaths in Colombia.
“Our clients They risked their lives by coming forward to hold Chiquita accountable, placing their faith in the United States justice system,” stated Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
“The verdict will not bring back the husbands or sons who were murdered, but it makes things clear and “places responsibility for terrorist financing where it should be: on Chiquita”he added in a note.
The banana company He had already confessed in 2007 before US courts to having financed the AUC between 1997 and 2004.an organization then considered a terrorist by Washington, so supporting it was a federal crime.
Such support was “prolonged, regular and substantial,” according to the Justice Department, so The company was fined $25 million.
lThe company alleged, however, that it was the victim of extortion when he paid the money to the paramilitary group and that he did so to protect his personnel and facilities in the Urabá region, in northwestern Colombia.
The AUC spread terror in Colombia in the 1990s and the beginning of the century in the context of a bitter war against leftist guerrillas, sometimes helped by members of the armed forces.
Some 20,000 combatants from these squads demobilized between 2003 and 2006 under the government of then President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).
The eight plaintiffs in the Florida case alleged that Chiquita transferred almost 2 million dollars to the AUC and even helped them transport weapons and drugs, despite knowing that this militia was involved in serious human rights abuses.
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The jury accepted the argument that the money given to the paramilitaries It was used to commit homicides, kidnappings, extortion, torture and forced disappearances.
Marco Simons, general counsel of the NGO EarthRights, which assisted the plaintiffs, hailed the verdict as “a powerful message to companies around the world: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished.”
EITHEROther civil proceedings against Chiquita are underway in the United States for the same reasons. Hundreds of plaintiffs participate in them.
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