Chiquita Is Corporate Organized Crime

Chiquita International reached a settlement with families of six Americans who were killed by the Colombia FARC terrorist group. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this issue.

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This story, as soon as I saw this story, it made me think back of how many times I've seen this story. This is a story where Chiquita International reached a settlement with families of six Americans who were killed by the Colombia FARC terrorist group.

Yeah, there's a blast from the past.

Yeah, it is. It sounds a lot like some of the stories we've heard, whether it's Chevron, Shell, some of the big companies that have been caught up in this very same kind of thing. In this case, you had Chiquita. They paid well in excess of $200,000 dollars. Now the problem is when they made the first payment, Chiquita makes this first payment to this terrorist group. It's FARC. They're a terrorist group. They understand that what they wanna do is use that terrorist group to control people, citizens, that are objecting to the way that Chiquita's doing business there in Colombia. In other words, they're hiring their own thugs. They're hiring murders. They know who FARC is.

Right, muscle.

It's muscle.

They're paying for muscle.

They're paying for muscle. What is your take on it? First of all, this isn't close to being enough. Here again, how do you pay for murder and there be nothing more serious than this? Give your take on this.

Well, it was a long period of time. This story's been leaking out for over a decade, that Chiquita paid close to $2 million dollars over time, where they were funding FARC ...

Well, it was $1.7.

$1.7.

Actually, $1.7 million over time, but anyway, over time.

Over time that $1.7 million dollars, and this is in the infancy, this organization, the beginning, when they were cash-starved. What did they do with that money? Over time, they bought more ammo, they bought more guns, they better armed themselves, and they just increased their operations. They fed that organization until they started to go in. Like you said, it was five missionaries and a geologist, kidnapped them right out of their own home. What was gut wrenching to me ...

This is back in the early 90s. This mother was 23-years-old. They barge into her house. Two young kids were asleep. They dragged one of the missionaries out, handcuffed him, took him off into the jungle. Never saw him again. What did they do? They made ransoms. They made ransoms because Chiquita's right there paying. Nobody paid in this instance. The guy ends up getting executed. Never sees him again. My heart went out to this family. The mother said, "The hardest time was Christmas." Every year Christmas time, the girls would ask that their dad would come home. They never got any remains. Here's Chiquita behind the scenes, paying a lot of money, over time funding this organization.

Okay, here's what I think is really ... Chiquita said, "Oh, gee whiz. We funded both sides. There were both sides that we had to pay money to, to keep our ..."

My point is that ...

Their argument was to keep our employees safe, which is absolute crazy talk. What the money was paid for was because you would have something that Chiquita would do. They would use pesticides that would affect people in the area. They would take property of people in the area. They were doing things that citizens around the ...

Would object to.

... operation would object to. The missionaries would, of course, side with these people. What Chiquita said is, "Well, okay. We're gonna pay off this money." Now follow this just a second. It's one thing to say ... and they say, "Oh, we had no idea." Really? Let's say over time, they pay an excess of a million dollars, which they did. They make the first payment. Let's say it's $200,000 dollars that they pay out. The next two weeks after they pay the money, something happens. Arms are brought in. You start seeing people ...

Escalate.

... start dying. Things start escalating. Okay, that's the first time. Then they pay out another $500,000 dollars, and it escalates even more. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist for the people in management at Chiquita understand clearly what's happening.