The Cost of Doing Business

Prediction: these assholes will keep training mercenaries in Honduras until the Honduran government makes it clear, via a meaningful sanction, that they'd best stop. Twenty-five thousand bucks is nothing to these types.

Honduras fines U.S. company subsidiary, saying it illegally trained mercenaries
Published on Saturday, November 25, 2006.
Associated Press

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras: The Honduran government said Friday it has fined the local subsidiary of a U.S. company US$25,000 (€19,000) for allegedly training more than 300 Hondurans and foreigners last year to work as mercenaries in Iraq.

The company Your Solutions trained 340 Hondurans, Chileans and Nicaraguans in violation of labor laws, Public Safety Department spokesman Santos Flores told a news conference.

"The fine was imposed because the company was training mercenaries, and the act of being a mercenary is a form of violating labor rights in whatever country," Flores said, adding that the company, which he said is based in Chicago, llinois, "operated without permission in Honduras." Benjamin Canales, general manager of the Honduras-based subsidiary of Your Solutions, fled the country six months ago, Flores said.

The company could not immediately be reached in Chicago for comment late Friday.

In September 2005, Canales, a retired member of the Honduran military, said the company's trainees were private security guards "not mercenaries, as some people have called them."

"These are just people who want a job, and we have offered them one," Canales said.

Friday's fine was the second action the Honduran government has taken against the company. In September 2005, authorities — citing a federal law that prohibits security and military training for foreigners on Honduran soil — said that they were deporting 211 Chileans who came to Tegucigalpa to be trained by the company.

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