Treasury Department Will not Reconsider Action Against Starwood Hotels
Reuters reports that the Treasury Department has no plans to reconsider OFAC's decision to require Starwood Hotels and Resorts' Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel in Mexico City to evict 16 Cubans who were staying there for a conference earlier this month. The article quotes a Treasury Department spokesman as saying that "The law is the law, and OFAC is an enforcement agency that is statutorily required to enforce the law." "It's not a question for the secretary of the Treasury to rethink how the law is enforced -- that's not his role with respect to the activities of OFAC," he said.
The article also states that several business groups have criticized OFAC's extraterritorial enforcement of U.S. sanctions on Cuba. For example, as previously reported in International Trade Law News, USA*Engage, a coalition of business groups opposed to unilateral U.S. sanctions, has called OFAC's action a "counterproductive" move that damaged U.S. ability to push for democratic values and other foreign policy goals.
It should be noted that there has been a great deal of misunderstanding of the legal basis for OFAC's recent actions against Starwood. Many press reports have pointed to the Helms-Burton law as the basis for OFAC's actions. In fact, this case did not directly implicate The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996, P.L. 104-114, (commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act, most of which has been waived by successive presidents) since the hotel was owned by Starwood, a U.S. company. Rather, the legal basis for OFAC's actions are the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act/Cuban Assets Control Regulations which prohibits financial dealings with Cubans by any person subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
Labels: OFAC
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