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Portfolio has an excellent story this month detailing Chiquita Brands' illicit payments to Colombian paramilitary groups responsible for killing thousands of people.
No wonder there was some outrage when a U.S. court recently approved a deal that punished Chiquita with only a fine.
"For $25 million those who financed a mass massacre of Colombians were able to purchase impunity," Colombia Interior Minister Carlos Holguin told the Associated Press.
Between 1997 and 2004, Chiquita gave $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or A.U.C. Chiquita called it extortion, saying it felt compelled to make the payments. Otherwise, its workers could have been killed.
Portfolio's Kevin Gray writes that Chiquita's full board of directors wasn't informed of the payments until April 2003. Former CEO Cyrus Freidheim decided to continue them, but by February 2004 new CEO Fernando Aguirre had stopped them.
Aguirre joined Chiquita in January 2004 from Procter & Gamble. Both companies are based in Cincinnati.
This is not the Chiquita of billionaire financier Carl Lindner. His control ended when the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002. Each of Chiquita's eight directors is new since then, according to company filings.
Overseas Shipholding Group CEO Morten Arntzen, private investor Robert Fisher, former P&G CEO Durk Jager and S.C. Johnson & Son executive Steven Stanbrook joined the board in 2002.
Jaime Serra, former Mexico secretary of finance, joined in 2003, and Aguirre the following year. Clare Hasler, executive director of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Service, joined in 2005. Howard Barker Jr., former partner at KMPG, joined last month.
