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June 12, 2024 – 10:37
In a historic ruling, the US justice system on Monday held the banana company Chiquita Brands responsible for financing paramilitaries in Colombia. The verdict contrasts with the little progress made by Colombian justice on alleged relations between multinationals and these far-right squads.
The jury convened by a federal court in Florida awarded compensation of $38.3 million to the relatives of eight victims of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), perpetrators of hundreds of murders in the Urabá region (northwest).
Although Chiquita Brands claims that it was a victim of extortion, with its money the paramilitaries sowed terror during the 90s and the beginning of the century in Colombia.
Coca-Cola, the oil company BP and the mining company Drummond are some of the companies denounced for possible links with these armed groups, although they all reject these allegations.
“Why could the United States justice system determine in judicial truth that Chiquita Brands financed paramilitarism? (…) Why couldn’t Colombian justice?” asked the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, on the social network
– Without precedents –
Petro called for the creation of “a closing court” for these cases, permeated by powerful interests.
In Apartadó, a municipality in Urabá, families applauded the ruling against Chiquita.
My “son was disappeared” by the AUC, “they are not going to return him to me but at least I feel calm (…) at least one of them is already getting an answer,” Miriam Castillo, mother of a 20-year-old, told AFP. years a victim of the paramilitaries.
According to EarthRights, the NGO that represented the victims before a Florida court, “this is the first time that a US jury has held a large corporation accountable for its complicity in serious human rights abuses in another country.”
Chiquita would have paid the paramilitaries “three cents per box (of bananas) exported,” according to human rights defender and former director of the state National Land Agency of Colombia, Gerardo Vega.
– Coal and rifles –
In the past, other similar lawsuits have been dismissed by the justice system of the North American country.
In 2009, a Miami judge ruled against Sinaltrainal, a union of workers at a Colombian subsidiary of Coca-Cola that denounced the sugary drinks giant for financing paramilitaries who murdered three of its members.
According to the judge, the plaintiffs failed to prove Coca-Cola’s ties to the armed group and the events occurred too far from US jurisdiction.
In 2020, the UN condemned Colombia for not providing “an effective judicial remedy” to clarify the intellectual authors of the murder of Adolfo Munera, a Sinaltrainal member shot in 2002.
In 2015, the US justice system also dismissed a complaint against the US mining company Drummond for possible financing of paramilitaries, in a case that has made progress in the Colombian justice system.
The prosecution has already accused two company directors in Colombia of having financed armed actors in exchange for monitoring coal exploitations in the north of the country. The judge handling the file has not yet ruled.
After their demobilization in 2005, AUC members testified about their alleged ties to Drummond and the Swiss mining company Glencore, which operated in Colombia through a subsidiary called Prodeco.
– Trade unionist kidnapped –
In 2002, the Colombian trade unionist Gilberto Torres was kidnapped and tortured for 47 days by paramilitaries in the department of Casanare (east).
Torres had led a strike at a field exploited in part by Ocensa, a Colombian subsidiary of British oil giant BP.
In 2015, he denounced BP before the British justice system for its alleged responsibility in the attack. The case made little progress and a year later Torres abandoned his case, alleging lack of financial resources.
In Colombia, justice convicted a paramilitary known as alias Solin for the kidnapping. In his ruling, the judge determined that there are “sufficient elements of evidence” about “the participation of the multinational Ocensa in the kidnapping.”
The company has not been brought to trial in Colombia for these events.
“Colombian judges need to condemn companies that, like Chiquita,” financed paramilitaries, cried Gerardo Vega.
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