Current Position of Chiquita
Daytrading, Eminis, Forex trading, Swing Trading TOP STORY – 508102 — This story is disgusting. All this was is a cost of doing business. Was the US Military going to help? They are being shaken down in a foreign country and they are fined for their activities there? What choice do they have? Tell me? Oh yes, they can just quit the business. Yeah, great. Fabulous solution.The real shakedown artist here is the US Dept. of Justice. This is all under the dubious guise of terrorism. I see nobody taking the Chiquita side in this double shakedown which is even more pathetic. Everybody makes money except the company picking bananas. This turns out to be another reason to become an offshore corporation not paying any taxes. Good work.
Cincinnati, Ohio-based banana and farm products producer, Chiquita Brands International, Inc. on Wednesday revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice had imposed a fine of $25 million, which the company should pay in five installments.
Fernando Aguirre, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Chiquita, said the company entered into the agreement to pay the fine with the Department of Justice, on investigations upon the payment made by the company to right-and left-wing paramilitary groups in Columbia, which is considered a crime according to the U.S. law.
In 2003, Chiquita voluntarily confessed to the Department of Justice that the company’s former banana-producing subsidiary in Columbia was forced to make payments to the ultras to protect its employees. The company disclosed about the payments, once top brass of the company became aware that the U.S. law branded the groups as terrorists.
Good plan. Make everyone who is a criminal a “terrorist.” Then cash in!
Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code prohibits businesses from using bribery in the course of doing international business. When that provision was first added to the UCC in the early 1990s, there was considerable concern that it would place U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage. What has happened is most other nations have also enacted similar legislation when they found U.S. companies were not adversely affected, and were actually cutting costs.
Chiquita Brands broke the law, and they are paying the fine. Apparently they figured bribe + fine = reasonable cost of doing business.
You need shed no tears.
Am I the only one who suspects that Chiquita might not “contribute” enough $$ to their Republican representatives?
If you can afford bribery over there, you can afford bribery over here, the GOP sez.
Hi John,
I live in Colombia, the paramilitary groups are indeed a terrorist group, so I am sorry to say your post is definitely not well informed.. Paramilitary groups are not common criminals, these are drug funded armies, just like their enemies, the guerrillas..
let me remind you that Colombia has put hundreds of thousands of deaths in the war against drugs, only to find out that US companies continue to fuel the business via these payments..
I wonder what your reaction would be if you found out that Colombian business people are paying Osama for protection.. Would you consider that part of doing business in Afghanistan??? I doubt it..
Get real and go make sure that your kids are not smoking pot.. That would be a better use of your time, given the quality of information you used to form an opinion about this matter…
Bob expounds a nicely contructed paragraph on the matter and Lauren follows it with more partisan diatribe. Good work Lauren, thanks for the insight into this matter. When your so far up your own ass its going to be lots of hard work getting back out.
As Bob said, it was a cost of doing business for Chiquita. If people stop paying these extortions and start working to eliminate the cause then everyone is better off.
Thanks for your input Bob.
Dig a little. Why were these payments illegal?
From an AP article we learn that the money was paid (extorted) to groups that are “responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia’s civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country’s cocaine exports.”
In otherwords, those payments helped to fund terrorists. Here’s the AP article: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/4632487.html
If you dig a little deeper you’ll find and I think you’ll see that this isn’t about protecting employees. It’s about protecting your profits by funding terrorists. The $25 million is a message to others out there that they better think twice about making payments to known terrorists.
Chiquita knew what they were doing. What they were doing was wrong. Is it your position that there was no third option for them?
I hate the fact that an American company would rather pay money that supports people who murder and export cocaine, rather than find a better, perhaps more expensive method of protecting its workers.
So then tell me what choice does the company have except to pull up stakes?
I guess I’m on my own with this post.
Once you Negotiate with Terrorist , you’ll always be negotiating with terrorists. I can’t say for certain but If the Situation in Iraq is any Indication.They’re simply setting themselves up to repeatedly pay money to people for Protection. and that’s not making their business any safer. Hell If I can get away with it once, Why not threaten them once every 6 Months? and that’s putting them in MORE danger rather than moving out for a while
#7
Yes you are.
And just for the record, they were not hiring the paramilitary just to defend themselves, they were also using them to extort, murder and force people to give away their land.
Never forget how “respectful” these companies have been with latin american workers all through the 20th century. M$ lack of respect towards the goverments pale in comparison to the atrocities they have done in order to get cheap bananas.
#4, Great post. /sarcasm
Or rather great for razzing other’s opinion for no reason other then you don’t like them. I notice nothing in your post about your opinion. But, when you don’t have a mind, it is hard to have an opinion. I don’t always agree with those guys, but I do respect their opinions.
Thanks for your input
BobArriusyeah, JCD, you are on your own with this one. How many weapons did the guerrillas buy with all that cash and how many additional people are dead?
And if the DoJ was serious about the terrorist thing, some Chiquita execs would be fitted for orange jump suits …
No matter how you put it, they indeed negotiated with terrorist groups. Paramilitary groups in Colombia are not common criminals, as they are bent on bending the goverment to fit with their own needs. They have been involved in recent scandals with top Government officials in which thay made unholy pacts to overthrow the Constitution, “remake the Fatherland to make it our [their] own” and take back the few safeguards against complete tyranny that barely hold back the corrupt Colombian political class of landlords and political clans. They, along with their enemies the FARC guerrillas, have such deep pockets and weaponry that make look Al-Quaida like brats throwing a tantrum, and they even have international contacts, specially in Europe, where they get donations and international attention… make no mistake, if they both keep on going unchecked this way, fueled by the trillions of USD$$ they are gaining through extortion, trafficking of drugs, weapons, land and women, guerrillas and paramilitaries alike, will reach a stage where they will be able, and willing to confront foreign powers and nations, as Pablo Escobar did when he felt threatened. And given the not-at-all clean record of other companies like the defunct United Fruit Company performance in Colombia, this doesn’t surprise.
It’s painful to see the mighty Dvorak blog with such a horrible common misuse of an apostrophe in a story title.
“USA Soaks Chiquita $25 Million for Protecting it’s Own Employees From Certain Death”
That “it’s” should be “its,” unless you mean Chiquita was “protecting it is own employees.”
Yeah, I’m being a bit pedantic. But John should know better, and this mistake is so common among the morons posting their illiterate crap all over Slashdot, Dig, YouTube, etc., that I have no tolerance for it anymore.
How important will this rant be tomorrow? Not very. But if this comment reminds one person to mind their usage of its and it’s, the world will be a better place.
Shawn
#13
Yes, it’s its and it’s again.
I totally sympathise.
Maybe we should buy for John a copy of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss.
Is it me or did everyone here just ignore the fact that the article said that Chiquita was paying BOTH the left and the right. All I saw above me was denuciation for their payments to the right wing terrorists, but NOT to the left wing terrorists.
I take it it’s ok to fund left wingers, but not those terrible right wingers. If you happen to live in Columbia, either of these groups will kill you for the fun of it, and you aren’t going to give a rats ass which side of the political spectrum they are on.
As to Chiquita, I have no sympathy, the banana industry has more blood on it’s hands in South and Central American over the last 140 years than any dictator in any of those countries. They still to this day are the worst exploiters of their workers and the enviroment of any industry in the southern hemisphere. Thats why you can buy banana’s for .49 cents a pound.
I boycott ALL banana’s that are picked by United Fruit or Chiquita.
And yet another American company is hosed by the DoJ…while companies like Halliburton are allowed to run rampant with no-bid contracts, running up multi-billion dollar tabs in Iraq, paying who knows who millions of dollars to keep their operations underway.
As was stated above, it seems as if Chiquita missed their annual GOP donation.
#2 Lauren probably nailed the reason for the prosecution. The comment was about selective enforcement, not whether the payments should have been made. Payments to left-and-right drug terrorists, payments to DoJ enforcement bureaucrats, probable increasing payments to whatever party is in power – cost of doing business. And bananas are still 49 cents a pound? Joshua (15) has a point.
So does Pedro (6), who has said this sort of thing before. Again at the risk of pissing off Joshua, do you have some links to anything linking “emperor kuzco” with big players in the black market or with big right or left wing terrorists? I’d be interested in reading about it.
Ultimately I’m with JCD on this one. Those who do business in terrorized areas are making decisions in the field and Chiquita HQ decided to support them. Whatever the sins of the banana business, that’s an admirable trait in a business. Whether we’re in agreement with their decisions or not, viewing from a distance, second-guessing those in the field just tightens the double bind they’re already in. Even if Lauren’s wrong about politically motivated enforcement, there has got to be a better way to deal with it than with fines.
As for the issue of making payments to terrorists left and right, I suspect if you’re in the field trying to continue doing business, the moral imperatives so many are comfortable with in North American start to look a whole lot more gray.
The predecessor company of Chiquita is the United Fruit Company (look them up). They are big boys and know what they’re doing in Latin America.
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So then tell me what choice does the company have except to pull up stakes?
I guess I’m on my own with this post.
Comment by John C Dvorak — 3/16/2007 @ 11:59 am
HI John,
How about complying with the law?? I sincerely don’t mind if chiquita does not do business in Colombia.. The right way to put pressure on security is to demand it. Americans can always do business somewhere else.. I hope the main officials get extradited to Colombia, so they see the whole weight of the Colombian law on their actions..
If you want it to be heard by executives at Chiquita, be sure to post the messages on the Yahoo message board under ticker symbol CQB.
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/CQB