A jilted wife, a Cuban spy, and OFAC: how could this blog ignore a story involving all three at once? Last week a federal district judge in Miami ruled that Ana Margarita Martinez could not garnish money owed by U.S. companies providing licensed travel to Cuba to satisfy a $27.2 million judgment she obtained in 2001 against Cuba.

The circumstances of Ms. Martinez’s lawsuit against Cuba are detailed in this article, which, although it appeared in Time magazine, contains salacious details that we are unable to repeat on a family blog like this one. In brief, Martinez married a “hunky, sensitive” man named Juan Pablo Roque, described as looking “more like Richard Gere than Richard Gere does,” whatever that means (and I think you know). As it turns out, Roque was a Cuban spy sent to the United States to infiltrate Brothers to the Rescue. He secretly returned to Cuba just before the Castro government shot down the Brothers to the Rescue airplane. When questioned in a television interview about what he missed that he left behind in the United States, Roque calmly responded “My Jeep,” with nary a mention of Ms. Martinez. A lawsuit followed and in 2001, a sympathetic judge awarded Ms. Martinez a $27.2 million judgment against Cuba for its complicity in Roque’s torture and “battery” of Ms. Martinez. The judgment was awarded under now-repealed section 1605(a)(7) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C § 1602, et seq., which permitted money awards for torture against foreign states designated as state sponsors of terrorism, as is the case for Cuba.

Ms. Martinez attempted to satisfy the judgment in a state court garnishment action against licensed Cuba travel companies seeking payment of the sums owed by those companies to Cuba for landing fees and other airport services and charges. That action was moved to federal court where a magistrate’s report issued in June recommended quashing the writs of garnishment. Last week the federal district court judge adopted the report and issued an order granting the garnishee defendants summary judgment on their motion to quash the writs.

The magistrate noted that section 515.201(b)(1) of the Cuban Asset Control Regulations prohibited all dealings in or transfers by a U.S. person of property in which a Cuban national has an interest unless an OFAC license is obtained. He further noted that section 515.310 defined transfer to include judicial levies and garnishment. Since Ms. Martinez had neither applied for or obtained an OFAC license permitting the garnishment of these sums, the Magistrate’s report recommended that the writs of garnishment be quashed.

The wrinkle in the case is the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1610 note, which says that “blocked assets” of terrorist may be subject to garnishment to satisfy judgments obtained under section 1605(a)(7) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. However, the magistrate ruled that since the payments by the travel companies to Cuba were licensed by OFAC, they were not “blocked assets” under that provision.

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