Chiquita International reached a settlement with families of six Americans who were killed by the Colombia FARC terrorist group. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Peter Mougey discuss this issue.
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Transcript:
Mike Papantonio: This story, as soon as I saw this story, it made me think back of how many times I’ve seen this story. This is a story where Chiquita International reached a settlement with families of six Americans who were killed by the Colombia FARC terrorist group.
Peter Mougey: Yeah, there’s a blast from the past.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it is. It sounds a lot like some of the stories we’ve heard, whether it’s Chevron, Shell, some of the big companies that have been caught up in this very same kind of thing. In this case, you had Chiquita. They paid well in excess of $200,000 dollars. Now the problem is when they made the first payment, Chiquita makes this first payment to this terrorist group. It’s FARC. They’re a terrorist group. They understand that what they wanna do is use that terrorist group to control people, citizens, that are objecting to the way that Chiquita’s doing business there in Colombia. In other words, they’re hiring their own thugs. They’re hiring murders. They know who FARC is.
Peter Mougey: Right, muscle.
Mike Papantonio: It’s muscle.
Peter Mougey: They’re paying for muscle.
Mike Papantonio: They’re paying for muscle. What is your take on it? First of all, this isn’t close to being enough. Here again, how do you pay for murder and there be nothing more serious than this? Give your take on this.
Peter Mougey: Well, it was a long period of time. This story’s been leaking out for over a decade, that Chiquita paid close to $2 million dollars over time, where they were funding FARC …
Mike Papantonio: Well, it was $1.7.
Peter Mougey: $1.7.
Mike Papantonio: Actually, $1.7 million over time, but anyway, over time.
Peter Mougey: Over time that $1.7 million dollars, and this is in the infancy, this organization, the beginning, when they were cash-starved. What did they do with that money? Over time, they bought more ammo, they bought more guns, they better armed themselves, and they just increased their operations. They fed that organization until they started to go in. Like you said, it was five missionaries and a geologist, kidnapped them right out of their own home. What was gut wrenching to me …
Peter Mougey: This is back in the early 90s. This mother was 23-years-old. They barge into her house. Two young kids were asleep. They dragged one of the missionaries out, handcuffed him, took him off into the jungle. Never saw him again. What did they do? They made ransoms. They made ransoms because Chiquita’s right there paying. Nobody paid in this instance. The guy ends up getting executed. Never sees him again. My heart went out to this family. The mother said, “The hardest time was Christmas.” Every year Christmas time, the girls would ask that their dad would come home. They never got any remains. Here’s Chiquita behind the scenes, paying a lot of money, over time funding this organization.
Mike Papantonio: Okay, here’s what I think is really … Chiquita said, “Oh, gee whiz. We funded both sides. There were both sides that we had to pay money to, to keep our …”
Peter Mougey: My point is that …
Mike Papantonio: Their argument was to keep our employees safe, which is absolute crazy talk. What the money was paid for was because you would have something that Chiquita would do. They would use pesticides that would affect people in the area. They would take property of people in the area. They were doing things that citizens around the …
Peter Mougey: Would object to.
Mike Papantonio: … operation would object to. The missionaries would, of course, side with these people. What Chiquita said is, “Well, okay. We’re gonna pay off this money.” Now follow this just a second. It’s one thing to say … and they say, “Oh, we had no idea.” Really? Let’s say over time, they pay an excess of a million dollars, which they did. They make the first payment. Let’s say it’s $200,000 dollars that they pay out. The next two weeks after they pay the money, something happens. Arms are brought in. You start seeing people …
Peter Mougey: Escalate.
Mike Papantonio: … start dying. Things start escalating. Okay, that’s the first time. Then they pay out another $500,000 dollars, and it escalates even more. Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist for the people in management at Chiquita understand clearly what’s happening.
Speaker 2: They’re throwing gas on the fire.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Peter Mougey: It just got worse and worse and worse. It escalated, and people lost their lives. That’s a huge international company that is feeding a terrorist organization.
Mike Papantonio: It’s not the first time we’ve heard this story. This is a story that’s repeated …
Peter Mougey: This is part two of the story, actually.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it is part two of the story, but it’s something that’s repeated itself time and time. Now here’s the real twist on it. Now this only happened because you had the Anti-Terrorism Act that came into being. Thank goodness we have ways that we can deal with …
Peter Mougey: Tools.
Mike Papantonio: … tools for dealing with this type of terrorism. That’s exactly what it is. They’re funding terrorists. As you are working on the same case I’m working, our law firm’s working on the case where we’re finding that banks are washing money for terrorists. The money goes from UBS, it’s washed, and then it ends up on the street in the hands of terrorists. We’re representing people, of course, who have been victims of terrorism. That’s where this ends. We’re suing the banks because they understand clearly what’s happening with the money, just like Chiquita understood here what’s going on.
Peter Mougey: Well, if you were trying to connect the dots based on those stories, I think what’s interesting is that without Chiquita, without the banks washing the money, you wouldn’t have these problems. We wouldn’t have as many military folks coming home without limbs and without eyes and without …
Mike Papantonio: Or missionaries …
Peter Mougey: … or families that are widowed …
Mike Papantonio: .. that lose their …
Peter Mougey: … and kids that grow up without a parent. The travesty of this is big corporate America taking the profits and paying off terrorists to keep themselves and their bottom lines and promote their goods at the expense of regular people.
Mike Papantonio: It’s all about money. At the end of the day, so what we lose missionaries. So what somebody …
Peter Mougey: We can wash this money. We can get hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits in from these terrorist organizations. We’re gonna wash it up, scrub it up. Nobody’s gonna know where it’s coming through or that it’s going back to Iran or Iraq.
Mike Papantonio: Again, this was only happening because of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Now what I predict is you’re gonna see banks and companies like Chiquita …
Peter Mougey: Lobbying.
Mike Papantonio: … doing everything they can to make this Anti-Terrorism Act go away. It’s an extremely important act that allows us to go after … You talk about white collar criminal, they are the top of the food chain. This is an example where this actually happened.
