New York, 10 July 2020. On Wednesday, the government of the United States announced that it will impose a sanction on Amazon for bypassing the prohibitions on maintaining commercial ties with the Embassy of Cuba in Washington.
According to the text, selling goods and products to Cuban government employees and diplomats is a violation of the law, since the Island has been recently included in the list of countries that promote terrorism and human trafficking.
On the other hand, Amazon revealed in a statement that after weeks of talks with the US authorities, they reached an agreement to pay $134,000 as a sanction for bypassing the prohibitions on maintaining commercial ties with countries included in the blacklist of the Department of the Treasury´s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The announcement was made through a statement on the agreement on Tuesday, “to settle its potential civil liability for apparent violations of several sanctions programs” by that company.
According to the text, the alleged breaching is having accepted and processed orders on their website from people located or employed by foreign missions of Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, subject to unilateral sanctions of OFAC.
It is not the first time that Amazon suffers the effects of the US hostile policy against Cuba, since the online sales company was one of the US businesses hit by lawsuits under Title III of the controversial Helms-Burton Act.
That legislative section that Donald Trump´s administration activated on 2 May 2019, allows US citizens to sue people and entities, even from third countries, who invest on the Cuban territory in properties nationalized after the triumph of the Revolution, on 1 January 1959.
This measure contravenes the Charter of the United Nations and the precepts of international law, including the provisions of the World Trade Organization; especially when is aimed at reserving Cuba´s economic assets for the interest of US transnational corporations, and tries to damage even more the legitimate relations of Cuba with its partners from anywhere in the world.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations