Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of allowing Colombians to sue former Chiquita Brand International executives for the company's funding of the outlawed right-wing paramilitary organization that murdered their family members. He stated in his decision that “'profits took priority over basic human welfare' in the banana company executives' decision to finance the illegal death squads, despite knowing that this would advance the paramilitaries' murderous campaign." In February 2018, an agreement between Chiquita and the families of the victims had been reached. Information about who was behind the Chiquita payments to terrorist groups was made available by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research organization, in a series of document releases related to Chiquita's operations. In 2018, Colombia's Office of the Attorney General filed charges against 13 Chiquita Brands International executives and administrators after tracing payments made by a local Chiquita affiliate to the paramilitary group AUC, some of which was used to buy machine guns. Workers' rights A recurrent issue in agricultural large-scale production are workers' rights violations, in which Chiquita has been involved as well. In May 2007, the French non-governmental organization (NGO) Peuples Solidaires (fr) publicly accused the Compañia Bananera Atlántica Limitada (COBAL), a Chiquita subsidiary, of knowingly violating "its workers' basic rights" and endangering their families' health and their own. According to the charge, the banana firm carelessly exposed laborers at the Coyol plantation in Costa Rica to highly toxic pesticides on multiple occasions. Additionally, COBAL was accused of using a private militia to intimidate workers. Finally, Peuples Solidaires claimed that Chiquita ignored some union complaints for more than a year. Another, more recent case of exploitative working conditions dates from April 2019. The Swiss magazine Beobachter publicised severe labour rights issues on Ecuador's banana plantations, some of which supply Chiquita. These violations involve 12-hour workdays, poverty wages and employment without contracts. Environmental issues In 1998, a coalition of social activist groups, led by the European Banana Action Network (EUROBAN), targeted the banana industry in general and Chiquita in particular, aiming to create a new climate of corporate social responsibility. Their strategy was to encourage small farming of bananas rather than large scale monoculture, and to push for subsidies and other government relief to level the field for small producers. The fair trade movement, which sought to influence consumers to purchase the products of smallholders, also joined in the action. Chiquita responded to the activism