> During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004.
> The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming
Not saying this is the case here but imagine if Mexico allowed families harmed by cartels to sue every businesses that paid off cartel mobsters threatening to ruin their business, because they happen to operate in areas where the police/army consistently fail to control them and the gov/police often colludes with the cartel.
AUC is pretty notorious for penetrating the Colombian gov and law enforcement at varying levels.
> If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them
No, you withdraw from the country. Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. But paying the bribe and then continuing to do business with a foreign terrorist organisation is not grey area stuff.
And you watch your employees die? Great, you've saved your business and yourself from legal ramifications, and the people you worked for are dead, and your business is in ashes.
Chiquita did actually end up withdrawing from Columbia shortly after this.
> Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff.
This is not how the real world works. If you try this stuff with the AUC in Columbia, they will torture and kill your people for fun, and post it on LiveLeak laughing about it.
If a gunman comes to your office, what do you do? You defer to competent authority. Same here. Particularly when it comes to scheduled foreign terrorists, there is no (legal) excuse. (Moreover, if the gunman comes to your office every Monday.)
> If you try this stuff with the AUC in Columbia [sp], they will torture and kill your people for fun
If you're operating in Colombia without K&R (or, apparently, basic OpSec), that's on you. Otherwise, I know plenty of people who do good business in Bogotá and Medellín and need not debaucher themselves.
> The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming
Not saying this is the case here but imagine if Mexico allowed families harmed by cartels to sue every businesses that paid off cartel mobsters threatening to ruin their business, because they happen to operate in areas where the police/army consistently fail to control them and the gov/police often colludes with the cartel.
AUC is pretty notorious for penetrating the Colombian gov and law enforcement at varying levels.