Seatrade Cruise News Essex, United Kingdom 6 August 2019 Carnival asks court to dismiss Cuba stolen property claim in Title III case Carnival Corp. is being sued under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act for allegedly trafficking in stolen Cuban property, in this case, cruise facilities at Santiago and at Havana, pictured here PHOTO: Anne Kalosh Carnival Corp., the first US-based company sued by Americans whose properties in Cuba were seized after the revolution, has asked a federal court in Miami to dismiss the claim of a man who said he owns Santiago de Cuba cruise facilities. Florida businessman Javier Garcia-Bengochea said he holds an 82.5% interest in waterfront property in Santiago. He sued Carnival on the first day that Title III of the Helms-Burton Act became operative in May following a Trump administration policy change. Arguments for motion to dismiss Carnival’s attorneys asked the judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that the cruise operator did not ‘traffic’ the property, whose use was incidental to travel legally authorized by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, and because, they said, the plaintiff hasn’t adequately established claim to the property, which he is said to have inherited. Carnival further argued that being an individual shareholder in the Cuban corporation which owned the docks that were subsequently nationalized does not entitle the shareholder to assert a claim on behalf of the company. In any case, the company was Cuban, not US, and Helms-Burton applies to claims by US nationals. The case is being heard by Judge James Lawrence King. The full 100-page court transcript of the first motion to dismiss for a Helms-Burton Act lawsuit is here, provided courtesy of the New York-based US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. Council President John Kavulich noted the words of the judge, plaintiff and defendant are instructive as to how Title III lawsuits may be shaped and decided. Carnival is also being sued under Title III by US citizen Mickael Behn, who claims ownership of the Havana cruise terminal. Miami Herald Miami, Florida 5 August 2019 The Cuban government will fight Exxon over an expropriation case in a U.S. courtroom By Nora Gámez Torres In an unusual move, the Cuban government will defend itself in a U.S. federal court to fight a lawsuit filed by Exxon Mobil seeking compensation for a refinery confiscated by the Fidel Castro government in 1960. “It’s a new departure. Based on historical records, most people assumed they would not defend themselves in a U.S. court,” said lawyer Robert Muse, an expert on U.S. laws regarding Cuba. “This is genuinely interesting.” On Friday lawyers Michael Krinsky and Lindsey Frank, from the New York firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, notified the District of Columbia federal court that they would be representing CIMEX S.A. and Cuba Petroleum Union, known as CUPET, two Cuban state companies that are being sued by Exxon Mobil Corporation. Exxon, formerly known as Standard Oil, argues in the lawsuit filed in May that the Cuban companies have been profiting from a refinery in the port of Havana, facilities and gas stations that belonged to sub-subsidiaries of the U.S. company, with an original value of almost $72 million. The refinery, currently known as Ñico López, was nationalized in 1960 and Exxon claims that it received no compensation From the Cuban government. The Department of Justice has already certified Exxon’s property claim. A Cuban rides a bicycle in Havana near the Nico Lopez oil refinery in this file photo. Exxon claims the refinery was confiscated by the Fidel Castro government without compensation in 1960 and is suing in federal court. JOSE GOITIA AP Exxon’s legal case is based on the Helms-Burton Act. Signed in 1996, it allows Americans and Cubans whose commercial properties were seized by the Communist government to seek recourse in federal courts. But the right to sue was only recently authorized by President Donald Trump this May. Exxon’s lawsuit is the latest of at least nine against Cuban, American and European companies accused of profiting from property seized by the Cuban government. Among the defendants in other cases are the Miami-based Carnival cruise company; the French bank Société Générale; Trivago, a German subsidiary of Expedia; and Cuban hotel companies such as Gaviota SA, Cubanacán and Hotel Group Gran Caribe. Until now, the Cuban government had not hinted that it would respond to these demands. “The Cuban government has had the general policy of not appearing in the United States courts because it is a sovereign state, but government companies have sometimes appeared,” said Pedro Freyre, a lawyer at the Miami-based firm Ackerman LLP. Freyre is representing Carnival in a lawsuit filed by the American company Havana Docks for the use of the port of Havana. After Castro came to power, state companies such as the National Bank of Cuba litigated some cases in U.S. courts in the early ‘60s. But the government never defended itself in criminal cases such as the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the relatives of the pilots of the Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue, who died when Cuban military planes shot them down in 1996. Family members won the case and obtained a default sentence of about $100 million. “My law firm has represented Cuban enterprises and entities in the courts of the United States since 1960, including multiple appellate cases and four cases in the United States Supreme Court,” Krinsky said in an email. Most recently, in 2014, Cuban companies “successfully defeated an effort to seize Cuban-owned trademarks and patents that are registered in the U.S.” Krinsky said his clients would “vigorously defend” against the Exxon lawsuit. Exxon’s lawyers did not immediately answer questions sent by the Miami Herald. But the pressure of foreign investors and the real danger of several multimillion-dollar judgments against the Cuban government or its entities seem to have changed the minds of Cuban leaders at the last minute. They had not responded to the Exxon lawsuit since it was filed in May. “If the Cuban government does not defend itself, it would be sending the message to thousands of potential claimants that they can file a lawsuit and obtain a ruling and that the government would not defend itself,” said Muse. Responding to Exxon’s lawsuit also sends the message to foreign investors that Cuba will fight against the Helms-Burton Act to protect their interests, as stated in the Cuban foreign investment law, he said. “Not in Cuba’s interest to have a global entity like Exxon Mobil Corporation having a United States federal court default judgment it can use [to go after funds] from every country in the world,” said John Kavulich, longtime Cuba observer and president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. “Defending and losing is far better than not defending and losing. Of course, they might prevail.” The Cuban government could also be protecting the lucrative business of remittances to Cuba, which could be affected if Exxon wins the case. CIMEX, which is part of the GAESA military conglomerate and is currently under U.S. sanctions, manages remittance payments within Cuba through an agreement with Western Union. Exxon could go after the fees that Western Union pays to CIMEX to collect on a default sentence. Muse said the change in course also indicates that the government believes it can win the case. “Any good lawyer would tell you that the Cuban government has a good chance of winning this,” he said. Although the Helms-Burton law grants the federal courts jurisdiction over such cases, Muse believes that a legal argument could be made based on the due process clause in the U.S. Constitution. “The clause states that it would be unfair to drag a company to a court unless you can prove that it has real contact with the United States,” he said. If it wins the case, Muse said, the Cuban government would have achieved “a strong precedent that could persuade other claimants not to file more lawsuits.” Miami Herald Miami, Florida 31 July 2019 THE BRIBERY DIVISION How Odebrecht cozied up to Castros while maintaining work in Miami By Kevin G. Hall and Nora Gámez Torres Brazilian engineering giant Odebrecht S.A. spent hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes and illicit campaign contributions to win work across the Americas and land itself in trouble with the U.S. Justice Department. Leaked documents show Odebrecht projects in Cuba also generated large unexplained irregular payments. Over a period from 2010 to 2015, Odebrecht made irregular payments tied to the modernization of the port of Mariel, west of Havana, and the planned expansions of two Cuban airports, for which it had secured more than $800 million collectively from the Brazilian government. References to these irregular payments all appear in Drousys, an off-the-books accounting platform that Odebrecht’s Structured Operations Division ran via servers in Switzerland. It was a system created to track bribe payments and other spending that it didn’t want to account for in public audits of its finances. Found amid 13,000-plus Drousys documents is a document whose title references an $8.44 million payment under the English heading “Mariel Port Cuba conquest.” There are references from 2010 to a “services agreement.” And there are contract “additions” between Companhia de Obras e Infra-estrutura (COI), the Odebrecht subsidiary used to carry out the Mariel project, and an Odebrecht-affiliated Dutch shell company called Likam Bouwwerken International.