Plea 2007 · verdict 2024 Chiquita — Bananas, Blood, and a Terrorist Payroll

The banana giant Chiquita helped pay for a death squad. In 2007 it pleaded guilty in US federal court to making payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) — a right-wing paramilitary group designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2001 — and paid a $25 million criminal fine. Over roughly 1997–2004 Chiquita funneled some $1.7 million to the AUC; court records say that with this kind of financing the AUC and its predecessors grew from about 1,000 fighters to more than 30,000, and Colombian sources attribute over 100,000 civilian killings or disappearances to the paramilitaries in that era. Chiquita has always called the money extortion — protection payments under duress. A jury disagreed. In June 2024, after 17 years of litigation, an eight-member federal jury in West Palm Beach found Chiquita liable for the deaths of eight men killed by the AUC and awarded their families $38.3 million — the first time an American jury held a major US corporation liable for complicity in human-rights atrocities abroad. The judge rejected Chiquita's bid to slash the award; Chiquita is appealing, and this was only the first "bellwether" trial of many. Both the criminal plea and the civil verdict are adjudicated fact.