Where the stealing doesn’t stop.
MIAMI – (KRT) – Four decades after Fidel Castro’s government had apparently seized all foreign-owned properties in Cuba, it now turns out that a U.S. telephone company retained some 400 acres of land in and around Havana until just two years ago.
News of the surprising landholdings came after Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide – owners of the Sheraton hotel chain – filed a complaint last week with the U.S. Justice Department for $63 million worth of land it said the Cuban government seized in 2003 from a Starwood subsidiary.
“The land belongs to us. They can’t take it,” said Ignacio Sanchez, a Washington lawyer who represents Starwood. “The Cuban government basically said to go pound sand.”
Surprise.
Read it here.
Poor Ignacio, nothing belongs to you with communism.
The American Phone Company was the focus of 99 percent of the anti-Americanism in Cuba prior to 1959. Now it appears that by hook or crook–that is, through some formal “understanding” with Fidel Castro– it was permitted to retain for more than 40 years a valuable piece of real estate in Havana, intended no doubt for the construction of a hotel in joint partnership with Castro. Apparently the deal fell through and Castro took back “his” land. Well, you lie with dogs and you get up with flees. Serves them right.
And what makes them so special?
Doing a bit of catch-up at Babalu, I ran across this gem:
So did they seize the solid gold telephone from Godfather II?
You know, of course, Julio, that everything in the “Godfather II” movie is fiction. There never was a solid gold phone; the Mafia didn’t run Cuba or own Batista; Cuba was not a cesspool of gambling or prostitution; the Cuban revolution was not predicated on the redress of social inequities: lies, lies and more lies. Yet everything that the average American “knows” about Cuba–including politicians and reporters–was learned from that movie. The greatest defamer of the Cuban people after Fidel Castro is Francis Coppola.