Word: chiquita
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...Brown came to hold her job as the Department of Justice's top ethics cop in a slightly less complaisant way. Two years ago, when Brown was a federal prosecutor, she squared off against then private attorney Eric Holder in a tense plea negotiation that cost Holder's client, Chiquita Brands International, a $25 million fine and an admission that it had paid off Colombian terrorists to protect its lucrative banana-growing business there. (Read "Terrorism and Bananas in Colombia...
Brown is probably unwelcome at Chiquita, but the door to the Justice Department under now Attorney General Eric Holder swung wide open. Since April, Brown has been working for Holder as head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). Long considered a DOJ backwater, OPR assumed a higher profile in the final years of the Bush Administration amid widespread allegations of attorney misconduct, from the use of political litmus tests in hiring to improper firing of U.S. Attorneys. (Read "Inside Bush and Cheney's Final Days...
...trade unionists have been murdered there - about 120 a year, making it the world's most lethal country for labor - but there have been only 37 successful prosecutions, leaving a staggering "impunity rate" of 98%, according to Maria McFarland, Human Rights Watch's Colombia expert. This past March, Chiquita Brands International, Inc., pled guilty to one count of "engaging in transactions" with a terrorist organization for paying $1.7 million to a right-wing paramilitary organization seeking to wrest control of the Uraba banana-growing area from leftist guerrillas. Was it simply protection money or taking sides and in effect fueling...
...similar activities by other U.S. firms operating in Colombia. Terry Collingsworth, an attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund, which is supporting civil suits being pursued against Drummond, Nestle and Coca-Cola, says there should be, charging that other U.S. companies in Colombia have broken the same laws that Chiquita admitted violating...
...Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein, announcing the Chiquita plea agreement, said: "Corporations are on notice that they cannot make protection payments to terrorists." But the human rights lawyers complain that the message from the Chiquita deal is that if companies do transgress, they'll be let off lightly...