‘Banana justice’

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That was the headline of an editorial in Bogota’s El Tiempo newspaper Tuesday lauding Colombia for demanding that the $25-million fine Chiquita Brands paid the U.S. government -- for paying $1.7 million in protection money to paramilitary militias from 1997 to 2004 -- be sent back to the scene of the crime, as it were, to reimburse families of Colombian victims of paramilitary atrocities.

But on the facing page, El Tiempo columnist Claudia Lopez, an acknowledged expert in the paramilitary phenomenon, took her government to task in an essay titled ‘Outraged at Chiquita,’ claiming the company got off too lightly and that President Alvaro Uribe’s administration has been too docile both in its reaction to the U.S. settlement and its handling of the Chiquita scandal.

After telling reporters in March that his office was investigating the Chiquita payments, as well as claims by jailed paramilitary leaders that Chiquita facilitated the delivery of arms and munitions to the port city of Turbo, Atty. Gen. Mario Iguaran has not followed up on threats to seek the extradition of Chiquita executives. Chiquita, which in 2004 sold its interest in a banana plantation in the Uraba region, has maintained that it paid the money to protect its employees and because the Colombian government could not offer protection.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogota