The Chiquita banana company has pleaded guilty to paying $1.7m to a "violent, right-wing" organisation in Colombia which was designated a terrorist group by the US in 2001.
Court documents say senior executives approved payments - disguised in the company's accounting from 1997 and 2004 - to the AUC, a group responsible for some of Colombia's worst massacres and much of the country's cocaine exports.
The US company was fined $25m for making the payments in exchange for protection from the AUC and leftist FARC revolutionaries.
