Para-Business Gone Bananas: Chiquita Brands(US CORPORATION) in Colombia http://www.coha.org/para-business-gone-bananas-chiquita-brands-in-colombia/

Even worse, the corporation appears to have helped smuggle AUC weapons into the Colombian war zone. In 2001, Chiquita facilitated the diversion of three thousand Nicaraguan AK-47 assault rifles and five million rounds of ammunition from Panama to Antioquia, where Banadex controlled the port of Turbo.[xxii] The crates remained at Chiquita’s private facilities for several days before their transfer to fourteen AUC vehicles.[xxiii] While paperwork claimed that the Panamanian ship carried plastic and rubber balls, the Banadex employees used heavy-lifting machinery unnecessary to move the declared cargo.[xxiv] Two years later, the Organization of American States (OAS) found Banadex guilty of the illegal arms deal and probable bribery of port authorities, but somehow failed to mention Chiquita’s ownership of the subsidiary.[xxv]

Chiquita may have facilitated the transfer of at least four other arms shipments to the AUC. Hasbún himself has confessed to the entry of 4,200 assault rifles through Chiquita’s port of Turbo.[xxvi] In another instance, José Leonardo López Valencia, an electrical mechanic at Turbo, witnessed uniformed AUC paramilitaries offloading from a Chiquita ship crates believed to contain smuggled firearms.[xxvii] In 2001, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report revealed that Chiquita agreed to pay a USD 100,000 fine without admission of guilt for a 1995 bribery case in which Banadex employees paid Turbo port officials USD 30,000 to overlook two previous citations for failure to comply with Colombian customs regulations.[xxviii]

Chiquita’s assistance to the AUC extended even beyond illicit arms shipments, to tacit participation in the drug trafficking. The produce behemoth allegedly gave the right-wing umbrella group “uncontrolled access to its port facilities and ships” and Colombian prosecutors accuse the AUC of using Chiquita vessels bound for Europe to smuggle narcotics, particularly cocaine.[xxix] Éver Veloza García, former commander of the paramilitary Turbo Front in Northern Urabá, explained how paramilitaries evaded the control points of security agencies by tying narcotic shipments to the hulls of banana vessels at high sea.[xxx] Indeed, authorities have seized over one and a half tons of cocaine, valued at USD 33 million, from Chiquita ships.[xxxi]