HONDURAS: A Genuine Banana Coup

Early one morning last February, Eli M. Black, 53-year-old chairman of United Brands Co., plunged to his death from his 44th-floor Manhattan office. Early last week General Oswaldo López Arellano, 53-year-old Honduran chief of state, was overthrown in a bloodless coup. The link between the two men was an alleged $1.25 million bribe that is now being investigated by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a Honduran commission.

Anticipating the investigations that would inevitably follow Black's suicide, United Brands, a conglomerate with 1974 sales of $2 billion, admitted three weeks ago that it...