.1. Chiquita argued that the safety of its employees required payment of the bribes, even after learning of their illegality. What would you have done, had you been in charge? Explain.
2. Should Chiquita’s corporate officers have been prosecuted by the U.S. government? Explain.
Banadex, a subsidiary of Cincinnati- based Chiquita Brands International, paid bribes to Colombian rebels over a period of years, including $1.7 million from 1997 to 2004 to the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), a right-wing Colombian terrorist group. Chiquita, one of the world’s leading banana producers with operations in 70 nations, learned of the payments in 2000, but allowed them to continue. Reliable reports indicated that thousands of people had been killed, tortured, raped, or “disappeared” by the AUC (now disbanded). At the time, terrorists in Colombia were holding Americans for ransom or killing some of them, and years earlier four Chiquita employees had been killed by left-wing guerillas. The bribes, then lawful under American and Colombian law, were thought necessary to protect employees and company property at Chiquita’s Colombian operations.