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US firms paid Colombian militias, warlord claims

A paramilitary warlord said that US multinationals who buy Colombia's bananas financed illegal right-wing militias that killed thousands of people in a more than decade-long reign of terror.

In testimony to investigators on Thursday, jailed warlord Salvatore Mancuso named US firms Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte as having made regular payments to the militias, according to Jesus Vargas, a lawyer for victims of paramilitary violence who was present at the hearing, to which the press was barred.

Mancuso testified that "each one paid one [US] cent for each box of bananas they exported," according to Vargas.

Mancuso's lawyer, Hernando Benavides, confirmed his client's testimony.

Mancuso didn't specify why the companies paid the illegal militias but paramilitaries commonly exacted "war taxes" from businesses and ranchers in areas where they operated.

Across the country, the paramilitaries countered leftist rebel extortion. They also served as union busters, and killed hundreds of labor rights activists.

A spokesman for California-based Dole Food Co denied the accusation.

"Recent press accounts implicating Dole with illegal organizations in Colombia are absolutely untrue," Marty Ordman said.

Messages seeking comment left with the other fruit companies that operate in Colombia were not immediately responded to. A Del Monte spinoff, Del Monte Fresh Produce Co of Coral Gables, Florida, has a subsidiary in Colombia that buys bananas. It did not immediately return telephone calls.

Chiquita Brands International Co has acknowledged paying paramilitaries US$1.7 million over six years under a deal with the US Justice Department in which it paid a US$25 million fine.

Chiquita says the payments were made to protect the safety of its workers but Colombia's chief prosecutor has said companies that made such payments shared the responsibility for paramilitary murders.

Labor and human rights activists say Colombian companies and multinationals routinely paid paramilitaries to act as union busters, killing union leaders and so making this country the most dangerous in the world for unions.

Mancuso, testifying as part of a peace deal with the government, also accused Colombian beverage giants Postobon and Bavaria of paying "taxes" to the paramilitaries in return for permission to operate along the Atlantic coast, a longtime stronghold of the illegal militia.

Mancuso alleged that high-ranking executives of both companies were aware of the payments, which began in the 1990s.
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