Reply #17: Carl Lindner, Chiquita Banana, Huff Po & Democracy Now-IS THIS RELATED?

[mod mom]

YESTERDAY'S HUFF PO:


McCain Backer's Firm Pleaded Guilty To Funding Terrorist Group In Colombia

July 2, 2008 03:07 AM



The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company's board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University's National Security Archive as an "illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacres."

Following a Justice Department indictment last year, Chiquita admitted to illegally funding the paramilitaries and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Chiquita's payments to the AUC began in 1997 and lasted seven years; roughly half of the funds came after the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001.

-SNIP
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/02/mccain-fundrai...



AND FROM DEMOCRACY NOW ('98):

July 07, 1998
The Chiquita Banana Story

The ties between Chiquita banana C.E.O Carl Lindner and the Cincinnati political and business elite are strong; until 1979 Lindner was the controlling shareholder of the company that owned The Enquirer before its current publisher, the Gannett newspaper chain. The Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters, whose office is driving the investigation into Gallagher and who is responsible for appointing a special prosecutor, has received campaign donations from Chiquita.

While Chiquita hailed The Enquirer for acknowledging “that the conclusions in the article were untrue,” Harry Whipple, the Enquirer’s publisher, has said he believed the voicemails, despite how they may have been obtained, were real. In an interview with the New York Times, he said “We are not aware of anything to suggest that this is an instance of a reporter fabricating something.”

Nevertheless, the Enquirer has erased all the articles from its website; previously existing links on the internet to the stories now all lead to the Enquirer’s apology to Chiquita instead.

Chiquita, formerly known as the United Fruit Company, is the world s largest banana producer. Among the illegal Chiquita practices uncovered by the Enquirer s investigation:

Chiquita secretly controls dozens of supposedly independent banana companies. It also suppresses union activity on the farms it controls.
Despite its pact with environmental groups to abide by pesticide safety standards, Chiquita subsidiaries have used pesticides in Central America that are banned in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union. Chiquita also released harmful toxic chemicals into farms, killing at least one worker in Costa Rica according to a coroner’s report.
Chiquita’s fruit transport ships have been used to smuggle cocaine into Europe. More than a ton of cocaine was seized from 7 Chiquita ships in 1997. (The Enquirer story says the illegal shipment was traced to lax Colombian security rather than to Chiquita)
Chiquita executives bribed Colombian officials
Chiquita called in the Honduran military to evict residents of a farm village; the soldiers forced the farmers out at gunpoint, and the village was bulldozed.
An employee of a competitor filed a federal lawsuit charging that armed men hired by Chiquita tried to kidnap him in Honduras.

-snip
http://www.democracynow.org/1998/7/7/the_chiquita_banan...

NOTE THE LAST LINE COPIED!