Multinational banana corporation Chiquita is suing a federal agency for its decision to release information to the National Security Archive in Gelman Library, claiming the research institution would use the material to influence the results of current legal battles.
The Securities and Exchange Commission decided in January to hand over 23 boxes of documents about the company’s past relationship with Colombian paramilitary groups. Chiquita admitted in 2007 that officers of the company’s affiliate, Bandex, had paid about $1.7 million to terrorist organizations over several years.
But Chiquita argues the release of the documents would have the effect of “usurping” a judge’s authority in a case between the company and family members of victims of terrorism and would impact a criminal investigation in Colombia, according to federal district court documents filed April 4.
The archive requested the documents in 2008 to supplement a 13-year project documenting U.S. foreign policy toward Colombia and the nation’s civil strife, the project’s director Michael Evans said. He said it was the first time the archive faced this kind of challenge from an international company.
“The long and short of this is that for us it’s not just about Chiquita and Chiquita’s operations in Columbia and Chiquita’s illegal funding of terrorists there. It’s also about Columbia and what was going on there during civil conflict,” he said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission will postpone the release of the documents until the lawsuit is resolved.
The archive had already received some documents about Chiquita’s ties with armed groups in Colombia from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2011. Chiquita accuses the archive of “[launching] a media campaign to publicize biased mischaracterizations of the documents it obtained,” according to the court records.
“We reject that soundly,” Evans said. “It’s all there. You can read it in their own documents and decide for yourself if you think there are mischaracterizations.”
Chiquita Brands International, Inc. did not return a request for comment.
When researchers began to sift through the more than 5,000 pages of information released in 2011, Evans said they found evidence that Bandex officers had received “tangible benefits” from their transactions with Colombian paramilitary groups, such as protection of banana plantations. Chiquita was sentenced with a $25 million fine back in 2007, but maintained that the armed groups extorted the officers.
The court documents go on to attack the Securities and Exchange Commission for not withholding or redacting the same information the Department of Justice had, calling the decision “arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”
The complaint states that the archive and the public would not be harmed from the withholding or redacting of the documents, and “if they are harmed, the harm is substantially outweighed by the irreparable injury certain to occur to Chiquita and its affiliates.”
Evans said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the federal judge will uphold the Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision.
“Usually, we would be arguing as Chiquita now is against a decision an agency has made,” he said. “In this case, Chiquita is doing the reverse and arguing the information the SEC has determined is releasable should not be released.”
Judith Burns, a spokeswoman for the Securities and Exchange Commission, declined a request for comment.
