Illegal, but was it wrong?

The French bank BNP Paribas will pay nearly $9 billion in penalties for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, Sudan, and Cuba (Herald).

I’ll leave Iran and Sudan out of it and focus on Cuba for this latest case of our tax dollars at work in the application of the U.S. embargo.

There is no doubt that the bank’s actions were illegal. In the Treasury Department’s lingo, it moved funds “in which the Cuban government has an interest” through the U.S. banking system and it handled dollar transactions for Cuba. In the electronic tags attached to those transfers of funds, it concealed the fact that they involved Cuba transactions. Treasury tends to catch things like that, as some bank personnel warned, and it did catch them in this case. Hence the penalty.

But what did this bank actually do? Prosecutors explain in this summary.

The Cuba section explains that the embargo began with executive actions in 1960 and 1962 based on the U.S. government’s judgment that the Cuban government posed a threat to “U.S. national and hemispheric security,” and based on that, sanctions were applied under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

The “conspiracy,” the prosecutors explain, involved the bank’s operation of credit facilities for Cuban entities between 2000 and 2010.

Over the course of six years, from 2004 to 2010, $1.7 billion was transacted. That’s roughly the amount of U.S. farm exports to Cuba over a similar period.

Only two examples of transactions are given: “loans to a Dutch company to finance the purchase of crude oil products destined to be refined and sold to Cuba” and loans for “one of Cuba’s largest state-owned commercial companies,” which sounds like Cimex, but no detail is given about the company or the loan’s purpose. That’s it. There’s no suggestion of any commercial activity that threatens “U.S. national and hemispheric security.”

To prosecutors, the purpose of the transactions doesn’t matter because it’s illegal to move money connected to Cuba, period.

But as a foreign policy matter, for all we know the United States brought this case against a bank that was financing routine imports to Cuba – food, consumer goods, construction materials, etc.

This is the embargo at work under President Obama, who talks about the need to be “thoughtful” and “creative” in Cuba policy, and who likes to imply that our policy is an anachronism that needs to be fixed. Meanwhile, he mainly continues to carry out his predecessors’ policies. He continues to apply general pressure on the Cuban economy, with a special focus on international financial transactions. His policies make imports and credit more difficult and expensive for Cubans, and in this case he causes a conflict with a major European bank and an allied government, without even explaining how anyone’s interests were harmed by the credits extended to Cuba. Maybe one day he will explain how this serves our national interest.

New EU policy toward Cuba?

Havana-based BBC correspondent Fernando Ravsberg interviewed the new EU representative in Cuba Herman Portocarrero, who says that the EU is prepared to negotiate a new framework for its relations with Havana over the next two years.  That includes six months to prepare the negotiation and up to 18 to carry it out, allowing enough time to bring along every EU member in a unanimous decision, which is necessary to end the Common Policy.

The interview is written up here and here.

The idea is to replace the unilateral Common Position with an agreement that provides for cooperation in “food security and support for economic modernization, taxation, cooperatives, and micro-credits.”

Portocarrero noted “the freedom of expression that exists in the economic sphere because the first step is always to open space for debate and our hope is that other intellectual spaces open up for debate about social matters.”

Carromero goes home

Spanish Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero is back in Spain, having served a few months of his four-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter (El Pais).  He drove the car in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were killed last July near Bayamo in an apparent one-car accident. 

His return is pursuant to a 1998 agreement between Cuba and Spain that allows for nationals convicted of crimes in the other’s country to serve their sentences in their home country.  Carromero is en route to a Spanish prison and could in time be granted parole or some kind of conditional release.  Granma’s December 16 article on the transfer of Carromero says that Spain made a commitment that he would serve his sentence “in a penitentiary establishment in Spain.”

Reaction in Spain is polarized.  Carromero’s political colleagues welcome him back from his “nightmare” while others show no sympathy for a Spaniard whose driver’s license was revoked in Spain and whose mission to Cuba resulted in the death of two Cuban citizens.  Search Twitter for “Carromero” and get an earful.

Carlos Paya, Oswaldo’s brother, continues to allege that it was not a one-car accident, that a red Lada driven by Cuban government agents followed Paya’s car, rammed it, and caused the accident.  In an interview, he said that he has seen text messages to that effect from the phone of Aron Modig, the Swedish activist who was in the passenger’s seat.  He also said that the trip of Carromero and Modig was sponsored by a Swedish Christian Democratic organization.

Indeed, it is possible that Carromero will change his tune now that he is on Spanish soil.  In Cuba his account was of a one-car accident: he braked when he came upon an unpaved stretch of highway and lost control.  Modig, in interviews in Sweden, has claimed to have been sleeping and remembers nothing.  Maybe with Carromero home he too will change his tune, and those who are said to have received text messages will disclose them.  The questions that would then arise would include how they nearly reached Bayamo from Havana in eight hours after three stops, and why they would continue driving if they were being rammed by another car.

More complete background and discussion here. 

Other recent stories:

·         Ofelia Acevedo, Paya’s widow, sought to meet Carromero before he departed Cuba and presented her request to Spain’s ambassador in Havana.  The request was denied.  Carromero was transferred by Cuban police to Spanish police before departure.

·         This Spanish media report says, without sourcing, that discussions between representatives of Carromero’s family and representatives of the Cuban government resulted in a deal: a payment of $3 million (to whom, it doesn’t say) and “a promise that once on Spanish soil, Carromero will not speak about what happened in the accident.”

·         The Spanish foreign minister says that Spain “conceded nothing” to Cuba in return for Carromero’s transfer.  He noted separately that Spain supports a “flexible” interpretation of EU policy toward Cuba (the “Common Position”) that could lead to an economic cooperation agreement.

(Poster from this less-than-complimentary article, h/t Babalu.)

Prisoner releases in the "coming months"

Cuba’s government has been releasing political prisoners since last summer but has never itself set dates for completion of the process. The Catholic Church, part of the process, announced last July that they would be completed in three or four months, which meant November.

Now Cardinal Ortega is saying that the releases will occur in the “coming months” and notes: “A clear and formal promise from the Cuban government exists that all those prisoners will be freed.” Reuters report here.

According to the Reuters count, 52 prisoners from the 2003 crackdown remained in jail at the beginning of this process. Of these, 41 have been released, of whom all but one traveled to Spain with family members. That person is Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, 68, who was freed November 14 and remains in Cuba. Of the remaining 11, El Pais reported last November, two apparently want to emigrate directly to the United States and the remaining nine, like Lauzurique, assert their right to remain in their own country. Also, 16 prisoners not on that list have been released and have traveled to Spain.

All in all, it’s positive that the prisoners’ punishments are reduced and that they are out of jail and with their families. But there is a sour note: the Cuban government clearly leaned on the prisoners to accept the offer to depart for Spain, and gained leverage by making the offer to many family members who surely pressed the prisoners to accept it. So the departures appear voluntary, but with a push from the government.

Nonetheless, the prisoners in Spain have pointed out that they had a choice; some have said that they admire those who turned the offer down. The release of Lauzurique reinforces the idea that the choice was real.

If the Cuban government completes the releases, one doubts that that act will be presented or interpreted as an endorsement of the prisoners’ inherent right to engage in political activism in their own country. But it will certainly knock down the idea that those in Spain were forced to go. It would be good for Cuba to take the additional step of allowing those in Spain to return to Cuba at will.

In political terms, completion of the process would have several impacts.

Cuba’s population of prisoners of conscience would be reduced to very few, or to zero.

The Damas de Blanco will be changed, as many of their members are outside Cuba and their cause for weekly protests will have been addressed.

There is no sign that either Europe or the United States will react to that development. That is remarkable even taking into account the questions one can raise about the prisoner releases, or the fact that they do not end Cuba’s human rights problems. If there is no reaction, the message to the Cuban government would be to act for its own reasons and not to expect reciprocal gestures, even when Cuban actions address an issue that Washington and Europe have pressed, with vehemence, for decades.

Odds and ends

· AP: “The leaders of Cuba’s two main Jewish groups both denied having worked with a jailed American contractor whose family says he was on the island to hand out communication equipment to Jewish organizations.” The Herald reviews the Alan Gross case and interviews his wife. Mr. Gross’ attorney in the United States released a statement calling his year-long detention without charges a “travesty” that “violates every international standard of justice and due process.”

· Juventud Rebelde: As part of the “reordering of foreign trade activity,” a number of state enterprises are losing their authority to make their own decisions on import and export transactions.

· The Florida company Olympusat announces that it will launch “a new network featuring 100% Cuban-produced television programming” for the U.S. market.

· EFE: A Spanish Partido Popular official comes to Washington, huddles with legislators, and all express opposition to any change in EU policy toward Cuba. Meantime, France signed an agreement renewing its official cooperation with Cuba, but with no specifics about future assistance or projects (EFE). And a Spanish government aid program is assisting a new Cuban university wireless communications laboratory (Granma).