A major US-based banana producer is to pay a fine of nearly £13m after admitting it made protection payments to a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group implicated in human rights abuses and cocaine smuggling.
In a deal with the US justice department, announced last night, Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International pleaded guilty to one charge of conducting business with a terrorist group, agreeing to a fine of $25m.
The settlement resolves a lengthy justice department investigation into the company's financial dealings with both right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels in Colombia.
Prosecutors alleged that Chiquita paid around £900,000 between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC, in exchange for protection for its workers following threats by the group.
The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The US government designated the right-wing militia a terror organisation in September 2001.
This was the charge admitted by Chiquita, but prosecutors say the company also paid off other groups, namely the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company's banana-growing area shifted.
Left and right-wing paramilitary groups have fought vicious battles over Colombia's banana-growing region, with most of the victims being local people.
"The information filed today is part of a plea agreement, which we view as a reasoned solution to the dilemma the company faced several years ago," Chiquita's chief executive, Fernando Aguirre, said in a statement.
"The payments made by the company were always motivated by our good faith concern for the safety of our employees."
Chiquita sold its Colombian banana operations in June 2004.
According to court documents, senior company executives knew about the payments by September 2000 at the latest, and were told they were illegal.
"Bottom line: CANNOT MAKE THE PAYMENT," the company's outside legal advisers said in February 2003, according to an excerpt of a memo included in court documents.
Chiquita voluntarily told the justice department about the payments in April 2003.