Colombia may ask the United States to extradite officials of Chiquita Brands International Inc. to face charges that a former subsidiary paid money to illegal paramilitaries, officials said Saturday.
Chiquita, one of the world’s largest banana producers, said this week it would plead guilty to one count of doing business with a terrorist group and would pay a fine of $25 million in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Extradition works both ways,” said President Alvaro Uribe, who has sent hundreds of cocaine smuggling suspects to the United States since 2002 when he first took office.
Colombian prosecutors will determine if an extradition request should be made against company executives responsible for paying more than $1.7 million to the paramilitaries, who have committed some of the worst atrocities of this Andean country’s guerrilla war.
Businesses in Colombia often pay right-wing paramilitary militias, which were formed in the 1980s to help protect private property from Marxist rebels at war with the state since the 1960s.
Both groups, labeled terrorists by Washington, are locked in a war over lucrative cocaine-producing land in which they extort businesses and kill peasants accused of cooperating with the other side.
Newspaper publisher Sun-Times Media Group Inc. said Friday its chief executive, Cyrus Freidheim Jr., may be part of the investigations into Chiquita, which he headed from 2002 to 2004.
Sun-Times Media said Freidheim has not been told he is a target of a probe. But he could face questions as a former officer or director of Chiquita.
More than 31,000 paramilitaries have turned in their guns in a deal offering benefits that include reduced prison terms. But many “paras” have formed new crime gangs while Colombia’s main rebel group has yet to come to the negotiating table.
Conservative Uribe remains popular for his U.S.-backed crackdown on the rebels despite a scandal in which eight of his congressional allies and his former intelligence chief have been jailed for financing or otherwise supporting paramilitaries.