settlement, clearing the way for a corporate takeover by a Chilean firm, creating one the world's largest fruit producers.

Florida-based Fresh Del Monte Produce NV has said that Bermuda-based Eastbrook Ltd. will be paid $14.1 million to settle an ownership dispute over 25 percent of the fruit grower.

Fresh del Monte is apparently set to put up $4.6 million by redeeming some of its shares to Eastbrook, while the Chilean firm will put up $3.1 million in cash. The remaining $6.4 million will come from Fresh Del Monte parent, Grupo Empresarial Agricola Mexicano SA, controlled by the Mexican government.

Eastbrook is owned by Saudi Arabian banker Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, a defendant in the Bank of Credit & Commerce International fraud case in the early 1990s, Bloomberg has reported.

Eastbrook had claimed that it had acquired a 25 percent stake in Fresh del Monte from fugitive, Carlos Cabal Peniche, the former chairman of the fruit grower.

Cabal's assets were seized by the Mexican government more than two years ago as they issued warrants for his arrest for bank fraud. The authorities were said to control Fresh del Monte and other Cabal companies.

But this summer Eastbrook said they had settled with Cabal and had obtained a stake in Fresh del Monte during a settlement of part of the $120 million the Bermuda company claimed Cabal owed them from a series of failed or fraudulent transactions over five years to 1991.

In August, Fresh Del Monte asked for the intervention of the New York Supreme Court, seeking to bar Eastbrook from blocking the sale of Fresh del Monte to the IAT Group of Chile.