Three reasons why U.S. banks aren’t entering Cuba – yet

[flamingdem]

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2015/03/13/three-reasons-why-u-s-banks-aren-t-entering-cuba.html?ana=twt


It's easy to get excited about the opening-up of trade relations with Cuba, and while many banks in South Florida and the U.S. are interested, unknowns are keeping financial institutions from being completely bullish on the island. There are three main reasons why banks aren't entering Cuba quite yet: the cost of compliance for processing transactions, Cuba's status as a country on the list of nations sponsoring terrorism and the vagueness of doing business in the region.

--

According to the OFAC changes, U.S. banks will eventually be permitted to open and maintain correspondent accounts at financial institutions that are in Cuba, and conduct authorized transactions and process credit and debit card transactions for authorized parties.

But at the moment, the cost of compliance for banks processing those transactions is simply too high, said Andres Fernandez, a partner at Holland & Knight who discussed the obstacles to U.S. banks doing business on Cuba at the Florida International Bankers Association's Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Conference last week in Miami.

"The issue is two things for processing credit and debit card transactions: You need a person to be in Cuba and you need the person to be there for an authorized reason," Fernandez said in an interview with the Business Journal."The issue becomes magnified when banks may be required to do due diligence to make sure that person is authorized. The regulations appear to permit banks to rely on the traveler for compliance with this authorization, but this 'safe harbor' is not absolute."

[Judi Lynn]

1. Interesting seeing the largest reason given:

One of the biggest barriers to banks engagement with the Cuba is that the nation is on the U.S. Department of State's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list. There are only four nations on the list: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Cuba has been on the list since March 1, 1982.

Ronald Reagan was the one with this bright idea. What an @$$####. That's some legacy he left, isn't it? All those dead indigenous Central Americans.

Grenada!

Mining the harbors of Nicaragua! Death squads! Massacres of entire villages, including babies, old people, rape, bashing the heads of babies against trees, raping the mothers, throwing the bodies, some living, into wells, torture all around, on, and on, and on.

Decides Cuba is a "terrorist" nation. Oh, you bet.

Just say "no" to genocide, Ronald.

[flamingdem]

2. Judy I so well remember that era

and so despise Reagun.

I remember the New York Post cover after Grenada: Yanks Pound Kamikaze Cubans.

Also remember marching from a church to the New York Times after the nuns were killed "New York Times print the truth" was what we were yelling.

Strangely during the Nicaraguan war the Times was supportive by having Alan Riding a reporter who was sympathetic to the Sandinistas.

Once again the Times had a journalist really impact the opening to Cuba, he prepared the way with that series starting last fall. Curious what drives them, who drives those editorial policies.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Incomprehensible. No logic to any of this.

Never knew about the N.Y.Post cover on the attack on Grenada. That headline really figures. I'll bet Reagun absolutely loved it.

What he did during his time occupying the White House was grotesque. He brought to life all the fascist fantasies regarding going wherever you want, killing any and every person you wanted, and never getting rebuked for it, because you are all powerful, by God. He was a cruel fool living it up while good people bled all over the ground in the Americas.

[hack89]

4. There is no reason for Cuba to be on that list. nt

[Marksman_91]

5. Of course not

It's just an unfortunate relic of the Cold War, and to many right-wing blokes, especially the likes of the Cuban-American ones, feel they should maintain a failed 50-year-old policy because it means not giving more money to the Castros, when in reality the cons far outweigh the pros. Hopefully Obama can convince more than three people needed in congress to remove Cuba from that list and end the embargo officially.