As Cuban exiles warned when Obama announced his surrender to the Cuban dictatorship, the so-called thaw would be a financial boon for the communist Castro dictatorship. And indeed it was.
Via Periodico Cubano (my translation):
Cuban government collected $138 million from U.S. cruise ships during the Obama era
The Castro government collected $138 million from cruise ships that left the U.S. to Cuban ports during the normalization of relations promoted by the Obama administration.
The figure comes from a report published by El Nuevo Herald that details lawsuits filed against several companies that operated cruises to Cuba. The civil trial is taking place in the Southern District Federal Court in Florida against Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, and MSC Cruises.
Supporting documentation shows that “agreements were signed with Cuban government-owned agencies to procure tourism services for their passengers despite the prohibition of tourism by sanctions.” Those trips were camouflaged as “people-to-people” contacts established by the Obama administration after a thaw in relations with Cuba.
“The services included excursions to cabarets and beaches that did not appear to comply with the regulations regarding trips to Cuba,” court records say.
One of the plaintiffs is Havana Docks, an American company that launched its lawsuit against the cruise line companies for illegally utilizing three docks at the Port of Havana. Those docks were the property of Havana Docks and confiscated without compensation by Fidel Castro in 1960.
The evidence presented by the plaintiffs included “signed contracts, financial statements, email exchanges, legal evaluations, and sworn statements.”
Continue reading (in Spanish) HERE.
And is anybody in any way responsible even remotely sorry? Hell, no. And you bet they’d do it again.
Cuban exiles also warned what would happen to Elián González if sent back to Castrogonia, which is pretty much exactly what happened, and nobody seems to have noticed, let alone cared, except “those people.”
It’s called willful blindness, at least in polite circles. In others it’s called hijeputez.