Feb
22

United Church of Castro Tours Havana

Posted by Clif Burns at 6:29 pm on February 22, 2007
Category: Criminal Penalties • Cuba Sanctions • OFAC

Weekend in HavanaAccording 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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4 Comments:

  • 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 on February 22nd, 2007 @ 10:48 pm

  • Szubin said they “undermine the good works” of religious groups, not that they make it more difficult for groups to get licenses. I would be really surprised if this leads to OFAC denying licenses to groups of Baptist and Roman Catholic missionaries to Havana.

    And don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any sympathy for people who defraud the licensing process in order to get those license even though I think the whole Cuba embargo is silly and counterproductive. I just thought that Szubin’s rationale was odd or, perhaps, oddly expressed.

    Comment by Clif Burns on February 22nd, 2007 @ 11:16 pm

  • I agree. Szubin’s rationale was akwardly worded. I, too, think that it’s unlikely that OFAC will cease issuing licenses to religious organizations. However, because of the acts of “license abusers,” legitimate religious organizations wanting to operate in Cuba will be more closely scrutinized as OFAC will receive pressure from State Department and the Miami crowd to crack down on abuses of this category of travel. A big deal was made in the Miami press about the abuses of the Santeria groups. It just makes things harder. That’s my point.

    Comment by anonymous on February 23rd, 2007 @ 10:35 am

  • [...] The criminal complaint filed against the two Florida men who obtained Cuba travel licenses for fake churches is amusing reading, at least if you enjoy reading about gangs that couldn’t shoot straight. Some 4,500 people traveled on the fake churches’ licenses and it’s easy to see how the authorities caught wind of the scheme: During interviews by Customs and Border Protection (”CBP”), travelers returning to the U.S. after traveling on these licenses admitted . . . that they were not traveling for religious purposes. [...]

    Comment by ExportLawBlog » Bad Missionaries (Cont’d) on February 23rd, 2007 @ 3:48 pm

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