Unbelievable
Given the Bush administration’s assertion that anyone who aids a terrorist group should be prosecuted as severely as the terrorists themselves, $25 million seems a light penalty.
But it didn’t buy the company out of trouble. Colombia’s top prosecutor says he wants to extradite the executives who reviewed and approved the payments.
The U.S. will have a hard time arguing with that request. Colombia is our strongest ally in South America, and hundreds of alleged Colombian drug traffickers have been extradited to the United States since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. Atty. Gen. Mario Iguaran has aggressively prosecuted Colombian citizens and companies for dealing with the guerrillas or the paramilitaries. Eight former members of Congress, all allies of Uribe, are in jail for colluding with the militias.
Whether it was acting to protect its people or its profits, Chiquita’s actions, detailed in court records, reveal an appalling lack of respect for life and law. Executives continued making payments to the terrorists even though company lawyers repeatedly advised them to stop. The payments were disguised in the company’s books, and in later years were made in cash. Even after the board of directors voted to approach the Justice Department about the payments, some executives resisted. “Just let them sue us, come after us,” they told their lawyers.
They are shocked, shocked I tell you that an American company had a relationship with a right wing terrorist group in Latin America.
Let’s see–there’s this guy named John Negroponte who helped start many of those right wing terrorist groups who is now Deputy Secretary of State.
The only good line is here:
“When you pay a group like this,” Iguaran said, “you are conscious of what they are doing.”
Just as Negroponte was.