Uncovering Corporate Fraud: Forensic Simulation Applied to The Chiquita Brands Case in Colombia

This article presents a didactic simulation designed as a pedagogical tool, not an empirical ‎investigation, to enhance the teaching of forensic auditing in higher education. The pedagogical ‎use of practical cases for teaching forensic auditing has proven to be an effective tool for students ‎to understand the dynamics of fraud from a critical and empirical perspective (Felski, 2024). ‎Inspired by the dual approach proposed by Felski, where students first "commit" fraud and then ‎detect it as forensic auditors, this study replicates the logic in a real-life context, analyzing the ‎documented case of Chiquita Brands International Inc., a company that, according to court ‎documents and testimonies, made systematic payments of more than $1.7 million to paramilitary ‎groups in Colombia between 1997 and 2004, under an accounting structure designed to conceal ‎the illegality of such transactions.‎ The evidence contained in the report submitted to the International Criminal Court reveals that the ‎payments were not only known and authorized by high-level executives but were also integrated ‎into internal accounting systems that deliberately omitted traceability and the true purpose of the ‎transfers. Such practices offer an invaluable opportunity for students to analyze evidence of fraud, ‎document accounting inconsistencies, and examine the mens rea (malicious intent) in the way ‎financial contributions to the AUC, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. since 2001, were ‎designed and executed.‎ The proposed educational exercise consists of reconstructing the accounting flows and internal ‎control systems used by Chiquita, identifying regulatory gaps, and applying digital forensic audit ‎techniques to uncover how the concealment schemes were structured. It also promotes ethical ‎reflection on individual and corporate responsibility in the commission of financial crimes of ‎international impact. This methodology strengthens not only the technical competence of auditors ‎in training, but also their ethical judgment in complex situations where fraud is masked under ‎strategic "business" decisions‎.