Dole Foods and Chiquita may be on the verge of facing
justice for 'pacifying' their work force, suppressing labor unions and
terrorizing peasant squatters in Colombia. (Occidental, Coca-Cola and ExxonMobil have also allegedly been engaging in the same practices.)
A
federal judge recently refused to dismiss a civil suit filed against Chiquita
which charges that the company paid leftist (FARC) guerrillas operating near
its plantations in Columbia -- during a period when the FARC killed four
American missionaries, according to CNN.
A few years
before he first passed through the revolving door, when he was Deputy Attorney
General, current U.S. Attny Gen. Eric Holder had authored a famous corporate crime policy memo
(known as the "Holder Memo")
which suggested that the "prosecution of a corporation is not a substitute
for the prosecution of criminally culpable individuals within or without the
corporation."
At this point you'd think Holder would automatically and very publicly recuse himself from any decision concerning the requested extradition of Chiquita execs (would the U.S. tolerate it if a government official tied to the cartels blocked an extradition request?) or any other matter related to the investigation of multinational complicity in violence in Columbia.
The company's position -- which it has held consistently since it voluntarily disclosed the payments to the Department of Justice -- has been that both left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries forced the company in an extortionate manner to make the payments "to protect the lives of its employees."
One of the
ex-paramilitaries -- Jose Gregorio Mangones Lugo (aka "Carlos
Tijeras") -- was the former commander of the William Rivas Front of the
United Defense Forces ("AUC") -- the group that operated in northern
Columbia, in the zone where the companies and their suppliers grew bananas. In
a sworn statement Tijeras described the AUC's relationship with the multinational
banana companies as "an open public relationship" involving
everything from "security services" to the kidnapping and
extrajudicial assassination of labor leaders fingered by the companies as
"security problems."
Tijeras'
statement -- which reads like the confessions of a corporate death squad leader
and directly refutes his paymasters' version of events -- has now been entered
into the record in a case filed against Dole last April in California by
attorneys with Conrad and Scherer:
"I've been
told that Chiquita has asserted that they paid the AUC funds, but that this was
coerced and was a form of extortion. I have also heard that Dole claims to have
never paid us any funds. Both of these assertions are absolutely false. In
fact, my agreement with Chiquita and Dole was to provide them with total
security and other services."
Tijeras is not
a lone whistleblower by any means. Salvatore Mancuso, the overall commander of
the AUC, also testified in early 2008 that Dole and Del Monte, like Chiquita,
had been providing major support to the AUC since its inception. He repeated
the accusation to "60 Minutes," which originally aired the segment in
September, 2008.
According to
these and other witnesses as well as investigators familiar with the bloody
history of Columbia, the AUC was originally hired by the companies to drive the
leftist FARC guerillas out of the banana-growing region and protect their
plantations from "the gangs of common delinquents that robbed their
supplies and equipment." (Tijeras) Once the FARC was vanquished and order
restored, the banana companies continued to pay the AUC to "pacify"
their work force, suppress the labor unions and terrorize peasant squatters
seeking their own competing land claims.
Tijeras:
"After we restored order and became the local agents of law enforcement,
managers for Chiquita and Dole plantations relied upon us to respond to their
complaints...We would also get calls from the Chiquita and Dole plantations
identifying specific people as "security problems" or just
"problems." Everyone knew that this meant we were to execute the
identified person. In most cases those executed were union leaders or members
or individuals seeking to hold or reclaim land that Dole or Chiquita wanted for
banana cultivation, and the Dole or Chiquita administrators would report to the
AUC that these individuals were suspected guerillas or criminals."
According to
Tijeras, for years the companies provided up to 90% of the AUC's income.
When a case was
filed by the families and heirs of dozens of victims against Dole this past
April (2009), the company immediately rejected the charges as
"baseless allegations" that "are the product of the most
untrustworthy sources imaginable" and "nothing more than the false
confessions of convicted terrorists from Columbia, who had every motive to lie
about their activities in order to minimize their jail time."
(The
plaintiffs' complaint is a horrific litany of summary executions, off-the-bus
abductions, forced-entry murders and kidnappings, ghoulish disappearances and
other crimes committed against trade unionists and land reform activists.)
Of course Dole
is correct to refer to the AUC as "terrorists" -- a designation that
the U.S. State Department assigned to the group (coincidentally) on September
10, 2001. But if the payments are proven, then, as Chiquita learned, the
consequences will be harsh: Payments to designated terrorists are illegal --
whether coerced or not -- and whether or not the company is cognizant or
indifferent to the consequences.
As mentioned, Chiquita pleaded guilty in March 2007 after
voluntarily disclosing the payments, and ended up agreeing to pay a $25 million
criminal fine for violating U.S. antiterrorism laws. The Chiquita criminal case
was remarkable for numerous reasons, not least because the company continued to
make the payments against the advice of its own outside counsel, and even AFTER
notifying the Justice Department.
As part of that
settlement, Chiquita acknowledged that it had also made payments to the FARC
from 1989 to at least 1997 -- the period when the missionaries were abducted
and killed. Now the families are suing Chiquita under the civil provisions of
the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991, which allows American citizens and their heirs
to be compensated for injuries resulting from international terrorism.
Meanwhile, an
"independent" review commissioned by the
company's board reinforced Chiquita's claim that its sole motivation was to
protect the lives of its employees -- from both the FARC and the AUC.
That report may
help deflect derivative lawsuits filed by the company's own shareholders, but
the conclusion won't pass the laugh test in Columbia, where attorney general
Mario Iguaran has roundly rejected Chiquita's explanation and reportedly threatened to
extradite as many as eight Chiquita executives (including John Paul Olivo,
Charles Dennis Keiser and Dorn Robert Wenninger) who he says were responsible
for approving the payments and maintaining a "criminal relationship"
with the paramilitaries.
Another
remarkable thing about the Chiquita case is the fact that its attorney at the
time is now the U.S. Attorney General.
When he was
Chiquita's attorney, Eric Holder told the Washington Post that
it would be unfair to treat any company "harshly" that voluntarily
discloses payments to designated terrorists, and that if the company is
penalized, the individuals within the firm should not be.
Maybe it's time
for Congress to peel away any doubts. Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA), chair of
the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and
Oversight, launched an
investigation into U.S. multinationals' complicity with human rights violations
in Columbia back in 2007 with a hearing in which
witnesses testified about a pattern of multinational complicity with Columbian
terrorists -- including the Alabama-based Drummond Co., Inc., which allegedly paid members of a Colombian terrorist
group to kill three union organizers. (Drummond denies all of the
allegations that have been made against the company and its employees by
attorneys working for relatives of murdered Drummond employees, even while the
Miami Herald reported just days
before the hearing that paramilitaries had also come forward to talk in detail
about payments Drummond made to the paramilitaries).
Other companies
with operations in Columbia that were mentioned at Delahunt's hearing include
Occidental, Coca-Cola and ExxonMobil
Attorney General
Eric Holder is the nation's top cop, overseeing a department that we are
regularly reminded has fighting terrorism (and presumably punishing those
Americans who aid and abet it here or abroad) as its top priority - so it's
worth asking where the Department's investigation is regarding companies like
Dole, which unlike Chiquita won't volunteer any facts, and patently deny any
allegations - when there is so much obvious evidence pointing their way.
Charlie Cray is director of the Center for Corporate Policy in Washington, DC.
