Dr. Javier Garcia-Bengochea has filed a lawsuit against Airbnb for facilitating the trafficking of property stolen from his family in Cuba and profiting from its rental. An apartment building in Marianao, illegally expropriated and stolen by the communist Castro dictatorship in 1960 from the Parreño family, is listed for rent on Airbnb, where the vacation rental website makes a profit by arranging stays there.
Via Diario de Cuba (my translation):
Airbnb sued in Florida for profiting off a property in Cuba confiscated by Fidel Castro
The vacation rental company Airbnb has been sued for making money from a property listed on its site that was confiscated by the regime of Fidel Castro in 1960, reported the newspaper El Nuevo Herald.
Javier García-Bengochea, a Cuban-American doctor residing in Jacksonville, Florida, accuses Airbnb of profiting from this property expropriated by Castro after he came to power and for which his family was not compensated.
The property in question, located on 33rd Avenue in Marianao and advertised on the company’s platform at least since 2017, is a building with six apartments owned by the Parreño family, including Alberto Parreño, cousin of García-Bengochea and administrator of the family estate.
According to US media, in 1970, the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the US Department of Justice certified Parreño’s claim to one-third of the land and the building, then valued at $547,365.24.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday in the Central District Court of Florida, based in Orlando. The document argues that Airbnb continued to advertise the property between August 2019 and May 2022, even after being notified that it was being claimed.
The administration of former US President Donald Trump allowed American citizens to sue third parties for using assets confiscated by Cuban authorities, a provision of the Helms-Burton Act that all previous presidents had waived since the law was passed in 1996.
According to the US-Cuba Economic and Commercial Council, there are 5,913 certified claims for confiscated property in Cuba, representing nearly $2 billion in liability.
Until 2023, 44 lawsuits had been filed under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, according to this organization.
In January 2022, Airbnb Inc., based in the United States, reached an agreement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to pay a fine of $91,172 for accepting American guests in Cuba who traveled without being included in the 12 categories authorized by Washington.
The sum agreed with the Treasury Department entity would allow the company to settle its potential civil liability for alleged violations of sanctions against Havana. Likewise, OFAC charged Airbnb for having outdated mandatory records associated with its operations on the island.
The global company that manages home rentals worldwide was the first significant American company to start operating in Cuba after the rapprochement between Washington and Havana in 2014.
Between 2016 and 2017, when Airbnb could offer its service to tourists of any nationality, Cuba became the fastest-growing market for the company.
According to an investigation by Raúl Santiago-Bartolomei, a Puerto Rican specialist in Urban Development and Planning who studied Airbnb’s presence in Havana, between 2015 and 2017, the number of monthly reservations there increased by more than 12,000%. And between late 2016 and March 2020, Airbnb’s total monthly revenues in Havana ranged from four to ten million dollars, according to the Argentine newspaper El Diario.
Good luck with that. Cuba is full of “nationalized” stolen property, literally everywhere.
There’s a Facebook page called “Casa a la venta en USD” which I find sickening. Stolen properties for sale left and right . My family’s home in Rancho Boyeros is now an “Hospedaje”.
Yes, but don’t complain. You’ll get zero sympathy (except from other victims) and you’ll be considered a bad person for “wanting your stuff back.”