U.S. Prevents Spanish Bank from Offering Services to Cuba

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madrid, Sep 10 (Prensa Latina) The economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the U.S. on Cuba over 54 years ago, prevented Spanish Banco Santander from offering services to representatives of the Caribbean island in this country, trascended here today.

A press release of Havana’s embassy in Madrid revealed the system of sanctions of Washington prevented the Santander from having sales outlets at the Cuban General Consulates in the cities of Barcelona, Sevilla and Santiago de Compostela.

‘It is disappointing that three Cuban consulates have been banned from receiving services from a Spanish entity to improve attention to their users’, lamented the Cuban ambassador to Spain, Eugenio Martinez.

The diplomat attributed those restrictions to ‘obscure and unjustified unilateral decisions of the U.S. that affect negatively the Cubans and third countries’.

How is it possible that two months after the visit to Havana of President Barack Obama, last March, a subsidiary of the Santander bank in Catalonia tells the Cuban consul in Barcelona that they could not put an outlet to facilitate users the payment of consular tariffs through magnetic cards, asked Martinez.

The release says the explanation given then by the largest financial entity in Spain was they could not render that service according to an agreement signed with Elavon, U.S. company handling credit and debit cards of the U.S. Bancorp Bank.

Also, a subsidiary of the same bank in Seville, Andalusia region, canceled on June 1 a contract signed on May 12 with the Cuban Consulate in that city to have an outlet because Elavon said U.S. restrictions on the island prevented it from doing so, said the note.

Also in May, 2016, the Santander Galicia’s subsidiary informed the Consultate of the Caribbean nation in Santiago de Compostela it could not approve the setting up of the device for the payment of that service in the consular office.

They said ‘what it meant is they would stumble again on the international regulation of OFAC which impedes to contract products for Cuban entities, despite the fact that for more than a decade the Cuban consulate in Galicia is a client of the Santander Bank’, recalled the communique.

For ambassador Martinez, the prohibitions are unexplainable when in March, 2016, the departments of the Treasury and Commerce of the United States, announced they would allow the Banks to process operations of the Cuban government.

The diplomat denounced those three consulates in Spain ‘have been victim to the extraterritorial application of the greatest system of financial coercitive measures standing’, alluding to the blockade of the U.S. government against his country.

It is an evident obstacle to the normal functioning of those offices which prevents the ordinary consular functions and represent harmful limitations for Cubans resident in Spain, to Spaniards and other foreigners that demand services from Cuban offices’, he sentenced.

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HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 9 (acn) Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the US economic, financial and commercial blockade still persists, and caused Cuba damages for some 4.68 billion dollars last year alone.

At a press conference to present the report Cuba will take to the United Nations, Rodriguez stressed that the economic siege has lasted over half a century and it has a negative impact on the well-being of Cuban families and the socio-economic development of the country.

The Foreign Minister said the main losses for Cuba were in the export of services and goods, increased prices to products because the need to buy them in faraway markets, and the impossibility of using US dollars in its financial deals.

Cuba will introduce at the UN General Assembly next October 26 Resolution 70/5 under the name: Necessity to end the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States to Cuba.
Despite the improvement on the relations between Cuba and the US, the harm the blockade does to the Cuban people forces Cuba to present this resolution again, said the Minister