No easing of U.S. blockade on Cuba By: IPS Cuba Photo: Jorge Luis Baños
In 2012, the U.S. authorities intensified the sanctions against banks that conducted transactions with Havana. Barack Obama’s presidential re-election in November 2012 encouraged expectations, or rather speculations, about a possible easing of the United States’ policy of economic blockade against Cuba. But the truth of the matter is that the year that recently ended collected a list of harsh U.S. sanctions against companies and banks from third countries that maintained relations with Cuba. The hopes of improvement, without real foundations on the horizon, seem to have deluded in a short time. In the face of the aggressiveness of the presidential candidate that lost, Mitt Romney, Cuban sociologist Esteban Morales described Obama’s victory as “a lesser evil for Cuba.” The expert on Cuban-U.S. relations recognised that “it’s always possible to dialogue with a person less reactionary and more intelligent,” but ruled out “thinking there will be important changes in U.S. policy with respect to Cuba.” As if to admit he was right, on December 11, barely a month after Obama’s electoral victory, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a 375-million-dollar fine against the second largest world company in assets, the HSBC Holdings Bank, based in London,
for the alleged violation of the U.S. sanctions against several countries, including Cuba. On the following day, the office in charge of controlling the blockade announced the imposition of another fine of 8,571,634 dollars, on the Japanese Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, for processing financing transferences of a group of countries, among which was Cuba. In an official communiqué, the Cuban Foreign Ministry said that these sanctions are a sign that the U.S. policy against the island “not only has not changed, but rather has become harsher.” The year 2012 was especially fertile in penalties against banking institutions from third countries. In June, OFAC fined the Dutch ING Bank for facilitating commercial transactions of several countries, including the Caribbean nation. The fine, which amounted to 619 million dollars, is the highest in history imposed by the U.S. government on a foreign bank for maintaining commercial relations with Cuba. According to the report presented by Havana to the U.N. General Assembly in October 2012, “during this last year the persecution of Cuba’s international financial transactions has been one of the most significant characteristics of the application of the blockade.” At the close of 2011, the United States had frozen 245 million dollars’ worth of Cuban funds. This government report estimated that the U.S. harassment throughout half a century had caused economic damages to Cuba that, at current prices, surpass the 108 billion dollars. After receiving the report, the United Nations’ highest ranking body approved for the 21st consecutive year a demand that the economic, commercial and financial blockade on Cuba be lifted. In favour of the resolutions 188 countries voted. Only three voted against (U.S., Israel and Palau), while two abstained (Marshall Islands and Micronesia). The most recent events have cooled down the expectations created by the modest steps taken by the Obama administration in 2011 to make flexible the trips to the Caribbean nation. Already by May of last year, the U.S. authorities redoubled the supervision of the trips to Cuba and announced fines of 65,000 dollars and even the suspension of licenses, among other actions, against any attempt from that country to make tourism on Cuban tourism. Instead of relaxing, bilateral relations intensified more in 2012, after U.S. citizen Alan Gross was sentenced to prison in Havana. Arrested while he was distributing communication equipment in Cuba, the government accused this subcontractor of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) of “acts against independence or territorial integrity.” The Gross case joins and counters that of five Cubans imprisoned in the U.S. for spying on Miami groups accused of terrorism by Cuba. (2013)