Chiquita must pay $38.3m to families of Colombian men killed by paramilitary groups

BOGOTA — Chiquita Makes Worldwide must pay $38.3 million in damages to the family members of 8 Colombian men killed by a paramilitary group in that place, a Florida jury stated on Monday.

Chiquita in 2007 was purchased by a U.S. court to spend a $25 million fantastic to settle prison prices that it did small business with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary group.

Chiquita pled guilty in that circumstance to having to pay safety money from 2001 to 2004, which it claimed it did in get to shield workforce.

The jury in the civil scenario right before the U.S. District Courtroom Southern District of Florida reported in the verdict on Monday that Chiquita knowingly offered significant assistance to the AUC in the sort of money payments or other signifies of guidance, to a degree sufficient to produce a foreseeable possibility of hurt.

The gentlemen ended up killed by the AUC, the jury said, and Chiquita did not establish its support for the AUC was the result of impending harm to the organization or its employees.

“The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who ended up killed, but it sets the history straight and destinations accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a lawyer at law agency Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, who represented the plantiffs, explained in a assertion.

Chiquita did not quickly reply to a ask for for comment.