Its a publicly traded company. Their first responsibility is to their shareholders. Lobbying against the bill is the right thing to do. Let the scumbag trial lawyers taken a bite out of someone else.
Amend the l3egislation to exclude this and any other company which has in the past paid money to terrorists in an attempt to save their4 employees. Also make it possible for companies in the future to pay providing the notify the authorities first.
Since our government trades with terrorist groups they can hardly go after someone else who does.
Wouldn’t this count as ex post facto law?
There is a LOT more to this than Chiquita.
Though the US officially discourages corporations bribing foreign officials, when almost all other countries are more than happy to allow bribes; even the US cannot stop humanitarian NGOs from paying tyrants money just so they are allowed to deliver food aid to some minority the tyrant hates.
Doctors Without Borders, for example, is known to pay bribes to the most hideous of dictators and war lords, just so that it can give medical care, and try to give polio vaccinations.
So should DWB be liable when that dictator or war lord continues to persecute and murder others?
But the fools trying to pass this legislation are only doing so because Chiquita had to pay blackmail to a Colombian anti-communist gang. Not a word about the blackmail corporations had to pay to the drug running leftist FARC.
So it’s a cheap political gimmick to stop bribery just to “right wing” groups. But the consequences of this law passing could be awful.