[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/alien_tort_statute
[2] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4232180/in-re-chiquita-...
The background is the stuff of movies, Charles Taylor was a high ranking official in Liberia that fled to the US after being accused of embezzlement (principally from US contracts), he was arrested in the US and “escaped” from Federal prison, fled back to Africa where he was armed and funded by Gaddafi, and became President of Liberia after a coup. His campaign slogan was "He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him.”
In fact both Charles and Chuckie are depicted in the Movie Lord of War, where Chuckie was the one who asks Nicolas Cage for the Rambo’s golden gun. Their brutality was also depicted in Blood Diamond, in neighboring Sierra Leon where they were behind Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and would cut people’s arms off (long sleeve/short sleeves for above/below the elbow) when they voted in elections, because voters hands/thumbs were inked as evidence of voting.
Chuckie interestingly was actually a born in the US and a private school kid. Then went to Liberia after Charles became President and became head of his anti-terrorists unit called the “demon forces”, the rest is the stuff of nightmares they leave out of the movies.
If you can read between the lines, this stuff goes to the highest levels of government and intelligence which is another reason the ATS Act is under attack.
[1] https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2010/02/fiu-im...
I suspect the problem is more that the statute gives U.S. courts jurisdiction over conduct that happens in foreign countries, and applies incomprehensibly vague standards such as “the law of nations.” It’s a statute that made sense in 1789 when it was enacted by a bunch of people that thought God made universal law applicable to the whole world.
Yet the same people who are likely to be responsible if this law does get thrown out are totally fine with plenty of other laws that make a lot less sense today than in 1789. Let's not pretend that the same court who ruled that all firearm regulations need to be interpreted in the context of what people would have thought in the 18th century[1] would rule differently on a case covering the law we're discussing because of legitimate legal reasoning; they're happy throw out precedents from the most recent couple of centuries in favor of regressing to some ancient historical standard when it ends up with the result they want.
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/politics-mississippi-state-govern...
Yet they passed legislation... what an absurd comment. By this logic, why regard the constitution at all?
I assume the portion of the first link you're referring to is the section that starts
> Courts have also split on whether corporations may be held liable under the ATS.
This is a question about the ATS and its scope specifically; the source is not discussing the nature of corporations generally.
It sounds like the scope of the ATS is fairly ill-defined, and that at various points courts have looked for whatever reasons they could to limit its scope, and whether a corporation was involved has just been one of those reasons.
Yes. Just like Californians, non-Americans and children are all natural persons with varying rights, Delaware C corporations, New York non-profits and unions are all legal persons with different rights.
I can see why that is controversial and almost certainly will be extremely selectively enforced.
I don't think it's really that controversial to prevent US companies from doing this.
But to be clear they had already pled guilty to doing that crime in 2007 (and they also prosecuted the AUC, many AUC leaders were extradited to the US in 2008).
This isn't about enforcement at all, this is them being found liable in a civil class action lawsuit, one brought by families of folks the AUC murdered.
wait - was the argument that the laws of these other countries they were operating in required them to fund paramilitary death squads? I must have missed that part.
I'm thinking the slope is not as slippery as feared here.
on edit: Ok I read your Mexican cartel example, slipperiness still not apparent to me how one slides from we hired death squads that killed people to we hired a cartel for protection but the money we paid was put in a big pile of money that cartel used to also fund bad stuff the cartel did that hurt people who were not trying to damage our company.
at any rate the amount of money paid out here having people killed is the usual cost of doing business slap on the wrist considering Chiquita's size and doesn't actually affect them. The negative publicity is worse.
For the extra cup of strange irony, part of the government in my country (Australia) just tried forcing X to delete posts for everyone globally instead of just not showing them to Australian users. Thankfully the court system told the Aust gov to bugger off due to overreach. ;)
It is wild to me how some people can throw something like this out as this like, unreasonable and clearly sarcastic question like, what you expect a corporation to follow the law everywhere? And I'm just over here like... yeah? Yeah. I... always did, really, I never considered that if I formed a corporation I could fund death squads in other countries to maintain access to cheap products. What the hell is wrong with you where you thought that was not only desirable, but a normal situation...?
I grew up very conservative and pro-free-market, and honestly a huge part of my transition to being a pinko commie scum was recognizing just how FUCKED big businesses are, especially overseas. Like you have the banal stuff like tax sheltering which is shitty but like, it's just money but then, oh MAN, they get up to some truly horrific shit. Death squads, union breaking, cataclysmic environmental damage, and it's 100% enabled by our system. I hope that this trend continues and we can finally get some justice out of these organizations that have clearly overstepped in so many ways.
The Travel Act for example makes it illegal to fly to another country to engage in sexual acts with a minor, even if it is legal in that country. Do you think that is some sort of government overreach?
I find it deeply ironic that such morally guided policy unravells a power projection machine only to then be replaced by another powers power projection machine void of values. A power that engages in values mimicry on the surface level and copies the colonial strategies it condemns. And in the end, the morally just but powerless are just written out of history. All the good intentions and they will have never existed.
Some kissinger minion will remove us from the internet archives to have a more correct history for the great leader. And lets not forget the physical, real disasters of antirealpolitics in Europe. Everyone scrambles to get nukes that idealists declared redundant.
In this game the moral and decent loose totally if they allow one player to gain enough power to flip the gameboard. Worser still the moral rightous ones become defacto usefool gamepieces rambling about "red lines & rules" of the opponents, while the littlefingers and kissingers play this game with one arm tied back. The blood in Ukraine is on your hands too, oh moral ones.
The mistake is assuming all those who have some amout of power all have the same agenda.
Such a state is never possible purely because people's personalities, needs, values, environment exist in a wide spectrum. Littlefingers and kissengers loose something everytime they win.
Its like a virus cant kill the host without killing itself.
Everyone involved needs to be locked away for a long, long time, not have to pay pennies as "punishment"
"Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (£30m) in damages to the families."
US is an evil empire.
But this is a civil case so they can't get more than money.
Honest what is disgusting is the chump change they are getting 38 mil only for the insane amount of profit the company gained.
If i make a crime, i go to jail. If a company does it, it gets a pat on a back and an insignificant fine. (exceptions - Volkwagen - apply).
We could go that way, but it would be a serious change of rules and create its own perverse incentives.
The US needs certain things from Russia: it's not that all trade has been sanctioned. Just trade that does not have enough lobby power to protect it.
Random Afghans and Iraqis were kidnapped for Guantanamo or outright murdered for less.
For the 2007 criminal case, the company came to the department of justice and disclosed the payments, saying they had been made under threat of violence. Specifically the AUC was threatening physical harm to employees of a Chiquita subsidiary in Columbia. The department of justice appears to have accepted that the payments were made under duress, but did not recognize that as a sufficient excuse, and decided to prosecute anyways. The company reached a plea agreement.
Honestly, it seems like the justice department came down pretty hard. Obviously giving money to terrorist groups under any circumstances shortly after 9/11 would be highly scrutinized, and the company could have dropped the columbian subsidiary, which they wound up doing eventually anyways, instead of continuing to pay the protection racket. But still it seems like they were victims in this too.
It’s also strongly analogous to an issue faced in tech: whether to pay the demands or ransomware gangs.
If the ransomeware gang has ties to terrorism, it’s a crime to pay the ransom.
It looks like the people who could be held individually criminally liable were in Colombia [1]. (I also imagine Chiquita gets points for notifying the DoJ versus getting caught.)
> Random Afghans and Iraqis were kidnapped for Guantanamo or outright murdered for less
To be fair, there is a world of difference between financing a foreign terrorist group and financing one that is attacking Americans. (That and we're cavalier with the lives of South Americans.)
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/March/07_nsd_161...
The CIA helped them, by overthrowing at least one gov’t. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%2527%...]
Money has always been a national interest for every gov’t everywhere.
That's not how democracy works. /s
Companies do not have to obey the law and, when they are caught, nobody goes to jail. They just need to pay some protection money.
Want to be a criminal without fear of prosecution ? Join a company, preferably on a management position.
- Chiquita was forced to pay "protection money" to the AUC. Read: "pay us or we kill your employees and burn your plantations to the ground."
- Chiquita makes the payment and alerts the Department of Justice that they were forced to pay under duress.
- The AUC kills 8 people, as cartels tend to do.
- Chiquita is held accountable.
This does not seem reasonable: First you get extorted at threat to life/property, then you get punished for getting extorted. Furthermore, it's tenuous at best to say "8 people died because you paid the AUC." The AUC kills/maims/tortures children every day for fun. This is not an exaggeration, most people will never comprehend the sheer evil of these organizations.
Calling for the execution[1] of Chiquita execs as some HNers are doing is absurd. Should Chiquita just let their employees get tortured to death and watch their properties burn to the ground?
Perhaps the government of Columbia itself should be responsible for not exterminating its cartels, and instead allowing them to infiltrate the deepest ranks of its military and government.
I grew up in a town where these groups had significant influence. It was very common to see businesses, both big and small, paying a "vacuna." Not paying could lead to kidnapping, intimidation, or even death for the owners or operators of the business.
You do realize this same justification has been given for the invasion of sovereign nations, and their destruction, since the beginning of time?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Overpass
Mentioned here too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%2527%...
It's amazing how decades later, they heirs of United Fruit Company are still using violence as a tool for increasing profit. This is what happens when individuals are not criminally prosecuted for bad conduct. I'm sure it will happen again.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/co...
Excellent reference!
The USSR was funding leftist rebels in several central and South American countries throughout its existence - Argentina, Grenada, Guatemala, the list goes on.
Doesn’t seem odd to me for the US to come in and back the current government?
Even if those governments weren’t democratic, I don’t think anyone can argue the Soviet backed ones were going to be beacons of liberty either.
[1]:https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/food-drink/story-bananas-ban...
[2]:https://growjungles.com/united-fruit-company-in-costa-rica/
[3]:https://www.biggerlifeadventures.com/chiquita-bananas-cia-fu...
[4]:https://history.wsu.edu/rci/sample-research-project/
Edit: formatting
I'll add this to the list
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Cooper_Keith
https://westisliphistoricalsociety.org/index.php/archives/ma...
(That's a death every 33 feet of construction, for 25 miles...)
https://www.unitedfruitcompany.com/biographies/the-seldom-re...
I'm very happy that an example is being made of them to warn other corporations that committing murder to protect your profits may cause a slight dip in your next earnings report.
This is damages, not a fine.
> for killing 8 people
If this verdict stands, you can bet there will be more lawsuits coming.
> which amounts to a tad over 1% of their 2023 revenue
There's income statements available for some years. Their margins are tiny - usually profits are 10% of their revenue or less. Sometimes much less or none.
Imagine, by contrast, the impact that executing one Chiquita executive would have.
> The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming
Not saying this is the case here but imagine if Mexico allowed families harmed by cartels to sue every businesses that paid off cartel mobsters threatening to ruin their business, because they happen to operate in areas where the police/army consistently fail to control them and the gov/police often colludes with the cartel.
AUC is pretty notorious for penetrating the Colombian gov and law enforcement at varying levels.
If someone threatens to kill your employees and burn everything you own to the ground - and you know they will - you're gonna pay them.
The government of Columbia should be held to account for allowing this evil to run rampant, not the victims of these cartels.
No, you withdraw from the country. Maybe you bring in a hostage negotiator to exfiltrate your staff. But paying the bribe and then continuing to do business with a foreign terrorist organisation is not grey area stuff.
America isn't solely responsible for the decline of the indigenous population of the New World from ~130 million to ~15 million.
Check out what Spanish did a few centuries previously, annihilating ~8 million of indigenous and millions African slaves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_Account_of_the_Destruc...
Lots of blame to go around. It's essential to know all of the uncomfortable parts of history and to avoid repeating them.
They had the choice between not doing business there and paying the criminals. They chose paying the criminals.
It's the same thing US residents do, with the same abusses by the government.
In another 100 years they might actually get a real sentence.
edit: I just learned about Ken Saro-Wiwa
we, the people, are liable
so not like, historical atrocities from the era most people think of when they say "banana republics". current-era atrocities, perpetrated by people who probably still work at the company today.
