Fidel Castro’s supporters call it theft. But victims of the Cuban government call it justice.
Families whose loved ones have been killed fighting the socialist government have recovered millions of dollars since 2000, tapping into Cuban assets frozen in the United States.
But there’s not much money left to pursue, said
Joseph DeMaria, a Miami lawyer who helped recover $47 million in 2006.
“I believe there’s very little left,” DeMaria told Along the Malecon. “I don’t think there’s much upside to chasing these assets anymore. Most of the money has been drained and I think any new money is being created and handled in a way that it’s kept offshore and out of the reach of the United States.”
DeMaria, shown above, is a trial attorney at the Tew Cardenas law firm, which represented the family of Howard F. Anderson, an American businessman executed by firing squad in Cuba in 1961.
DeMaria went after Cuban assets for the Anderson family under a provision of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, which was passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York.
The act allows people with judgments against “terrorist” parties to pursue the assets of ''any agency or instrumentality of that terrorist party.'' The law also says these assets can be used to satisfy judgments for compensatory damages.
Cuba is considered a terrorist party because it’s on the State Department’s annual list of terrorism sponsors.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, issues regular reports on blocked assets. Its 2009 report linked $223.7 million to Cuba. But it’s not a simple matter of pursuing that money because the Cuban government doesn’t necessarily own it, DeMaria said.
“You have a lot of money that goes back and forth between Cuba and the rest of the world,” he said. “And most of that money, because it’s going through the Western Hemisphere, if it’s a wire transfer, it’s going to go through New York at some point.
So what happens is, the banks will spot the word Cuba or Havana and they’ll just automatically freeze the transfer.
So when you see these blocked assets, and people think there’s all this money to grab, a lot of it is blocked under the regulations, but is not available for a victim of terrorism because it’s not Cuban assets. It might be the asset of somebody in London sending money to somebody in Cuba, but it’s caught up in the freeze.
“So you have to take the universe of blocked assets, which could be a few hundred million dollars, and you have to then focus and say, how much of that are Cuban assets? And I believe there’s very little left.”
