US stayed silent on Chiquita payments to Colombian paramilitaries: report

Aug 2 11:58 AM US/Eastern

Banana giant Chiquita told US government officials in 2003 it was paying protection money to Colombia's paramilitaries but allegedly did not receive clear advice to stop the illegal payments.

A board member of Chiquita International Brands, Roderick Hills, told Justice Department official Michael Chertoff, now the US secretary of homeland security, that the firm was paying a paramilitary group to secure its banana plantations in Colombia and needed advice, the Washington Post reported.

Hills knew the paramilitary group appeared on a US list of terrorist organizations but met with Chertoff in April, 2003, seeking guidance how to proceed, the paper said, citing court records and unnamed sources.

Chertoff, then the US assistant attorney general, allegedly confirmed the payments were illegal but "said to wait for more feedback," the Post reported, citing five sources familiar with the meeting.

Sources "close to Chiquita" say that Chertoff never came back to the company with advice and neither did another top Justice Department official, the Post said.

The meeting is at the center of a criminal investigation and comes after Chiquita pleaded guilty to paying 1.7 million dollars to one of Colombia's most notorious paramilitary groups, the United Self-Defense Committees of Colombia.

Chiquita agreed in April to pay a 25-million-dollar fine after the guilty plea.

Lawyers for the former Chiquita executives wrote to the Justice Department last week, saying their clients did not intentionally violate the law and believed they were waiting for an answer from senior US government officials, the paper said.

The case illustrates how the administration of President George W. Bush was torn between enforcing a tough policy punishing any support for terrorist groups while also avoiding creating trouble for Colombia's government, an important Latin American ally, the paper wrote.

A spokesman for Chertoff declined to discuss the case.

Colombia's paramilitary groups were organized as private armies for drug traffickers in the 1980s, ostensibly to protect landholders from leftist guerrillas who were extorting "war taxes."

In its plea agreement, US-based Chiquita said it made the payments because it had no alternative to protect the lives of its workers and to secure its operations when Marxist rebels were blowing up railroads used by US firms and kidnapping foreigners.

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