They'll keep a company with a long history of supporting/encouraging/covering up human rights
abuses without worries.
Faced with potentially billions of dollars in legal liability,
Chiquita Brands International is asking a federal appeals court to block
lawsuits filed against it in the U.S. by thousands of Colombians whose
relatives were killed in that country's bloody, decades-long civil war.
The
produce giant, which long had huge banana plantations in Colombia, has
admitted paying a right-wing Colombian paramilitary group $1.7 million
over a seven-year period. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company insists it
was blackmailed into paying or risking violence against its own
operations and employees, although in 2007 Chiquita pleaded guilty to
U.S. criminal charges that it had supported terrorists. It paid a $25
million fine.
This is EXACTLY the sort of case the "Corporations are the LOVELIEST PEOPLE in the WORLD" crowd in black robes wish to come before them.
Read more here: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/09/21/2585138/chiquita-seeks-dismissal-in-colombian.html#storylink=cpy
Rising Hegemon
5 comments:
corporations are not people???
Chiquita was once known as United Fruit, which has a long, long history of special pleadings to the government for favors. IIRC, it was United Fruit's Sam "The Banana Man" Zemurray that asked his old friend, John Foster Dulles (a stockholder in United Fruit), to do something about that upstart Arbenz in Guatemala that was costing him money. John Foster sent Henry Cabot Lodge to threaten Arbenz, and when that failed, John Foster reported to Eisenhower and the National Security Council that Arbenz was a communist, and that assertion (although patently untrue) was all it took to get Eisenhower to approve a coup, which Allen Dulles (another United Fruit stockholder) happily mounted.
The mafia has nothing on American business when it comes to getting its way, especially in the third world. I'm sure the Black Hand in the current court will accommodate.
Doesn't everyone get off with paying a trivial fine when convicted of supporting terrorists? What happened to being shipped to Guantanamo or Supermax for life and having all their assets confiscated?
So "corporations are people" but they get slap-on-the-wrist treatment not avilable to actual humans.
Hasn't Chiquita suffered enough? They paid their mercenaries $1.7 million, and a $25 million fine, and they were, like, blackmailed and stuff. Now they gotta answer to their victims and their survivors? When does it end? How long, O Lord?
This is starting to look like a bad business move, and we all know what that means: Bailout! Buy your Chiquita stock today.
chiquita isn't dead yet?
Post a Comment