Posted by Clif Burns at 6:29 pm on February 22, 2007
Category: 
According to this AP wire story, two men in Florida were charged with violating the Cuban Sanctions Regulations by applying for Cuba travel licenses using “fake” religious organizations. Prosecutors charged that the two men then sold these licenses to travel agencies which, in turn, sold these licenses to over 4,500 people who used them to travel to Cuba.
Adam Szubin, OFAC Director, provided a novel explanation of the harms caused by travel on fake licenses. Abandoning the traditional OFAC line that money spent by tourists on mojitos goes straight into Castro’s pockets, Szubin said this:
Those who fraudulently obtain or traffic in such licenses not only commit a crime, but also undermine the good works of legitimate religious groups traveling to Cuba.
Frankly it is hard to see how these tourists are harming the work of other religious groups. That could happen, I suppose, if a bunch of rowdy and over-served American tourists traveling on these licenses were pretending to be missionaries. That, of course, seems highly doubtful at best. Indeed, the fact that these tourists were likely not even making a pretense of being religious will pose more than a few difficulties for them when OFAC inevitably comes knocking at their doors.
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I can’t speak to what he meant. But the primary problem with these types of groups is that they just underscore the widespread abuse of the “religious” licenses and make it all the more difficult for legitimate organizations. The same thing happended years ago with the famous people to people licenses that started in the Clinton era. They were so widely abused (e.g., salsa dancing lessons) that OFAC had no choice and eventually that category of travel related licenses was abolished. Putting aside feelings about the embargo, I have zero sympathy for these guys.
Comment by anonymous — February 22, 2007 @ 10:48 pm