Nueva York, November 1st, 2023.- As a consequence of the policy of pressure, intimidation and dissuasion exercised by the United States government against international financial institutions, new methods are applied to hinder banking operations in Cuba.
These include the request for additional documents to carry out operations, which generates delays and limits the execution of payments to suppliers or the receipt of income from abroad, as well as the multiplication of the demands of the compliance areas. of the correspondent banks for the processing of banking operations, impacting the increase in information requirements on the operations processed by clients, not only from the correspondent banks, but also from the intermediary banks used by them and the beneficiary banks. .
The tightening of the extraterritorial application of the blockade in the financial field also affects natural persons. Reports accumulate from Cubans residing abroad who, anywhere in the world, are victims of their banks' refusal to operate or make transfers linked to the country.
In the stage analyzed, the number of foreign banks that for different reasons refused to carry out operations with Cuban banks amounted to 130 (75 from Europe, 21 from America and 34 from the rest of the world), with 267 operations involved.
For example, currently, more than 50 Cuban diplomatic missions abroad have lost relations with the banks that traditionally provided them with these services. Therefore, they have been unable to carry out the banking-financial operations that ensure their normal functioning.
The validity of the sanctions against the Cuban non-banking financial institution FINCIMEX continues to affect the volumes of remittances for the population that were sent from the United States through the Western Union company, after the closure of all the latter's branches. in Cuba that became effective in November 2020. During the analysis period, the entity stopped managing an estimated $651,329,080 in remittances, with the direct impact that this implies on Cuban families.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations