U.S. Strengthens Control of Economic Embargo against Cuba

President Barack Obama’s administration continued elevating the tone of its reprisals against Cuba and the companies that have dared to trade with the island, while tightening the grip of an economic blockade that has existed for half a century. The powerful United States bank JPMorgan Chase recently reached an agreement with the government to pay a fine of $88.3 million for violating restrictions instituted by the White House regarding trade agreements with Cuba, Iran and Sudan.

A statement from the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Department of the Treasury explained that JPMorgan processed 711,000 transfers that involved legal or naturally born Cubans amounting to close to $176 million.

The Havana-based transactions occurred between Dec. 12, 2005 and March 31, 2006. This is the second Cuba-based penalty that the Office of Foreign Assets Control has announced this month. On Aug. 16 the North American division of CMA CGM, the third largest global shipping company, received a fine equivalent to $374,400, for presumably transporting goods to and making financial agreements with the Antillean archipelago.

The verdict against JPMorgan Chase is the fourth biggest decision imposed by Washington since the presidency of George W. Bush, where the controls of the economic, financial and commercial blockade of 51 years were reinforced. In December 2008, Credit Suisse bank agreed to pay $536 million for a deal that would erase charges of aiding Iran, Cuba and other nations.

The blockade, enacted by the United States in 1960, and reinforced various times in past years, has directly caused economic damages to the Cuban people which, calculated at present-day value, are equivalent to a sum upwards of about $1 billion.

A Florida judge broke the world record for personal indemnities granted, according to this month’s highlights commentary by Radio Miami, in light of a verdict that conceded millions of dollars to a Cuban claimant.

“Anyone would think it’s some kind of joke: a ruling by a Miami judge that awarded a Cuban claimant a sum of $2.8 million,” noted El Duende’s column in the southern broadcasting station. Such an amount was given as compensation for alleged torture suffered by Gustavo Villoldo in Cuba in 1959, explained Radio Miami’s website. In his allegations before Judge Beatrice Butchko, Villoldo asserted that he was tortured for five days and was the target of several assassination attempts after leaving Cuba.

In response to this case, the Cuban newspaper Granma stated in its print edition that the United States not only houses terrorists, but rewards them as well, even if they are mercenaries from the Central Intelligence Agency that boast about having captured the mythical guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara.

As an added coercive measure within the United States’ blockade against Cuba, one can also consider the recent proposal by a Republican congressman, who suggested limiting immigrants’ familial visits to the island even further.

In a significantly controversial initiative for the Cuban community in the northern country, Rep. David Rivera presented a legislative bill that would prevent these citizens from returning to the Antillean nation over a period of five years.

Rivera’s amendment questions alleged gaps in the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows immigrants to adjust their legal status one year and one day after their arrival to the United States, and later travel without restrictions to their country of origin. The final version of this legislative bill is identified as H.R. 2774. A preliminary version of the legislation was presented in the House of Representatives Aug. 1, 2010, according to the southern newspaper Sun Sentinel. According to the representative of Florida’s 25th congressional district, Rivera’s plan aims to preserve the original sentiment of the Cuban Adjustment Act — active since 1966 — and prevent a law created to protect the persecuted from becoming distorted to cover those who are in fact economically-motivated immigrants.

Similarly, Cuban-American Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, president of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, urged the White House to take measures to prevent supposed violations of laws concerning tourism to the island.

In addition to Ros-Lehtinen and Rivera, efforts to tighten the siege against Cuba were joined by Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, through an amendment that added to a Treasury appropriations bill and was certified by a legislative committee upon oral vote.

Rivera’s proposal, like that of Díaz-Balart’s, would restore regulations concerning travel to Cuba to those that were in effect during the presidency of George W. Bush, before they were relaxed by President Obama at the beginning of this year.

At the end of July, President Barack Obama’s administration dispelled certain media doubts and confirmed through an official statement, a historically restrictive policy from Washington in relation to tourism visits by American citizens to Cuba.

In a public notice that can still be read on the Treasury Department’s website, the United States warned that “the relaxation of regulations for educational and cultural travel of United States citizen cannot be interpreted as promoting tourism toward the island.”*

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, attached to this branch of the United States government, decided to clarify what were described as “misstatements in the media.”

Some newspapers had suggested that Americans could travel virtually without restrictions to the neighboring country. The activities authorized in Obama’s last decisions are not tourism activities, said the agency in a notice. “The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control is aware of misstatements in the media suggesting that U.S. foreign policy, as implemented by OFAC, now allows for virtually unrestricted group travel to Cuba by persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

“OFAC now specifically licenses organizations that sponsor and organize certain educational exchange programs. … Authorized travelers to Cuba are subject to daily spending limits and are prohibited from bringing any Cuban ‘souvenirs’ or other goods into the United States,” the Department of the Treasury pointed out. In the United States, a law issued in 2000 prohibited the Office of Foreign Assets Control from granting licenses for tourism activities in Cuba. In January 2011, by Obama’s resolution, some restrictions were alleviated, but significant restrictions concerning the travel to the nation of Cuba remained in force. The minor changes only benefit those with academic, religious, cultural, or sport-related motives for travel, who comply with certain guidelines and above all with a policy that Washington referred to as “promotion of person-to-person contact.”*

“Civil and criminal penalties may result from a violation of the Regulations. … Authorized activities by People-to-People Groups are not ‘tourist activities,’” stressed the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the end of the statement.

*Translator’s Note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.