BOGOTA (Reuters) – Chiquita Brands International must pay $38.3 million in compensation to the families of eight Colombian men killed by a paramilitary group in that country, a Florida jury said on Monday.
In 2007, Chiquita was ordered by a US court to pay a $25 million fine to resolve criminal charges that it did business with the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
In that case, Chiquita pleaded guilty to paying protection money between 2001 and 2004, which it said it did to protect employees.
The jury in the civil case before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida said in Monday’s verdict that Chiquita knowingly provided substantial assistance to AUC in the form of cash payments or other means of support, to a degree sufficient to create a predictable situation. risk of damage.
The men were killed by the AUC, the jury said, and Chiquita had not proven that its support of the AUC was the result of imminent harm to the company or its employees.
“The verdict doesn’t bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and puts the responsibility for terrorist financing where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a lawyer at the law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll. , who represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
Chiquita did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Stephen Coates)
