WASHINGTON — Chiquita Brands International Inc. said Wednesday that it would pay a $25-million fine to settle a long-running Justice Department investigation of whether it knowingly paid "protection" money to Colombian paramilitary and rebel groups designated by the U.S. as terrorist.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Cincinnati-based fruit and vegetable conglomerate also said it would cooperate with the government "in any continuing investigation into the matter."
The agreement to cooperate is significant, one senior Justice Department official said, because investigators continue to focus on whether several current or former high-ranking company officials knowingly engaged in a scheme to pay at least $1.7 million to a right-wing paramilitary group and a left-wing rebel faction to keep them from targeting Chiquita employees and facilities in volatile parts of Colombia.
Both groups, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations and have been engaged in systematic extortion from businesses and local governments for years.
The Justice Department official and other authorities said the Chiquita investigation was the most prominent, and perhaps only, inquiry in which a U.S. corporation is believed to have provided financial assistance to a foreign terrorist organization since the Sept. 11 attacks. President Bush has said repeatedly that any financial supporter of a terrorist group should be prosecuted as severely as any terrorist operative.
"Obviously it's a sensitive case, an important case," said a second Justice Department official. Both men spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss any aspect of the investigation.
Earlier Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed a document of criminal information against Chiquita as a corporation, charging it with "engaging in transactions with a specially designated global terrorist."
Unlike a federal grand jury indictment, a criminal information is traditionally worked out through discussions between prosecutors and defense lawyers, followed by a guilty plea. A hearing has been set for Monday before U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in Washington.
The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington had no comment Wednesday on either the criminal filing or the investigation.
