Colombia Sentences Former Chiquita Executives for Paramilitary Financing

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Issue Jul 01-31 2025: A Colombian court sentenced seven former executives of Chiquita Brands to over 11 years in prison and a $3.4 million fine for financing right-wing paramilitaries during the country’s armed conflict.

Página/12 of Buenos Aires wrote that the tribunal in Antioquia found them guilty of “concierto para delinquir agravado” for links to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) in the banana-producing region of Urabá. Among those sentenced were three former general managers of Chiquita in Colombia between 1990 and 2004, including U.S. citizen Charles Dennis Keiser. Three other former executives were acquitted.

Prosecutors said Chiquita transferred about $2 million to the AUC between 1990 and 2000. The funds reportedly helped expand the group’s operations and enabled killings, disappearances, and torture of social leaders and rural civilians. Chiquita has claimed it was extorted and made payments to protect its staff.

Antonio Sanguino, Minister of Labor under President Gustavo Petro, called the ruling “historic” on the social platform X. Colombia’s conflict has left more than ten million victims, including an estimated one million deaths and 200,000 disappearances. The AUC operated for two decades, often with support from the military, in its war against leftist guerrillas. Around 20,000 paramilitaries demobilized between 2003 and 2006 during Álvaro Uribe’s presidency.

Chiquita is not the only multinational accused of ties to paramilitary violence. In July, prosecutors froze two Bogotá offices of the Anglo-French oil firm Perenco, citing alleged connections to the AUC in Casanare, in an effort to secure victim reparations.

Chiquita’s origins lie in the United Fruit Company, long criticized for political interference in Latin America. Historians link the company to the 1954 coup against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and to the 1928 massacre of banana workers in Colombia, which left over 1,000 dead.