By all accounts, this is a sad and awful story, the end of which is still being written. As it stands now, the Cincinnati-based Chiquita Bananas (Chiquita Brands International, Inc., NYSE:CQB) is being sued in a federal lawsuit by the relatives of five US missionaries from Florida’s New Tribe Mission who were kidnapped and killed in Columbia in the 1990s by leftist rebel group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia). The lawsuit wants Chiquita to be held responsible for their deaths because the lawsuit claims that Chiquita supplied money, weapons, and supplies to FARC, which led to the missionaries’ deaths. Chiquita, in turn, pleaded guilty in 2007 to one count of doing business with a terrorist organization and paid a $25 million fine as an agreement with the US Justice Dept. Chiquita says they suffered extortion by FARC and acted “to protect the lives of our employees and their families.”

Suddenly I feel as if I’m stuck in one of the Godfather movies. Yet, this is no movie, this is real life, skewed by corruption, greed, and power. It’s clear that through their guilty plea Chiquita admitted to wrongdoing, but did this wrongdoing lead to the deaths of the missionaries? To me, that’s preposterous. That’s like saying beer companies are responsible for drunk driving deaths. They’re not—the drunk drivers themselves are responsible for drunk driving deaths. Individual people are responsible for their own actions. Now, I’m not a proponent of beer, but I am a proponent of the people directly responsible for their individual actions being properly held responsible.

But I’m not here to argue responsibility or blame. A critical business question here is what does a company do when faced with corruption, with extortion? How does a company react when a terror organization threatens harm on their employees, their facilities, their livelihoods? How does a company avoid such corruption? These are tricky questions with many wrinkles of answers.

Certainly one answer is to be careful where you do business. Inherent in doing business in Columbia is the risk of exposure to drug cartels, violence, and the lawlessness in that area. These are serious risks. However, not all businesses in that area are effected. And if Chiquita doesn’t do a banana business there, a competitor probably will.

Which then leads to another point: if you must do business in a risky area, spend the money to invest in adequate security and protection of your employees and facilities. Chiquita has now paid $25 million in fines for their mistakes. Could they have paid less to keep their employees safe without having to pay extortion money to FARC? What were Chiquita’s options? I don’t know, but it’s something to think about. A company surely has the responsibility to provide safety to employees on company property—they must find a way to do that legally and cost-effectively in order to stay in business.

These are tough issues. We don’t know all the facts yet. But one thing I do know is that corruption is evil, far beyond a business expenditure, and must be fought against.