Jurors at a federal trial in South Florida found the banana giant liable for funding a violent group in Colombia in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Banana giant Chiquita Brands International must pay more than $38 million in damages to victims of a Colombian paramilitary group the company was found liable for financing in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a federal jury decided Monday.
The decision follows a 17-year legal battle for the victims, sparked after a 2007 sentencing agreement in which Chiquita admitted to the U.S. Justice Department that it paid more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia , a violent right-wing group that committed human rights abuses in Colombia and had been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
At the time, Chiquita had to pay a $25 million criminal fine for violating the U.S. anti-terrorism statute, but it has not had to answer to the AUC’s victims until this week, when a jury in West Palm Beach found the banana company liable for the deaths of eight men killed by the paramilitary group. The decision opens the door for thousands more victims of the AUC who are suing Chiquita. A second trial involving victims’ claims against Chiquita is slated to start in July.
representing victims in this case. This week’s decision marks “the first time an American company has been held liable by an American jury for human rights violations abroad,” Vahlsing said.Summary is AI-generated, newsroom-reviewed.Chiquita became entangled with the AUC while the company was trying to expand operations in Colombia during a period of political instability in the 1990s.
“Our clients risked their lives to come forward to hold Chiquita to account,” Agnieszka Fryszman, chair of law firm Cohen Milstein’s human rights practice and one of the attorneys leading the case, said in. “The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.
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