Cuban snatched property claims reviewed

Cuban snatched property claims reviewed
AAP

About a decade ago, the notion of a Cuba without Fidel Castro began to
seem increasingly possible.
"Fidel's looking infirm, and the Bush administration decides, well, if
something happens in Cuba we need to have a plan in place," says Michael
Kelly, a professor of law at Creighton.
The government commissioned several studies, including one taking
measure of the property seizures and possible strategies for settling
the claims. A group at Creighton won the job, despite being far-removed
from the South Florida-centred vortex of emotions that often swirl
around the issue of US-Cuba relations.
Professors recruited students, and they spent a week poring over old
claims at the settlement commission's offices in Washington, DC. Two
professors flew to Cuba, searching for homes and businesses listed in
claims paperwork, only to find the names of streets had changed. Some
buildings were apparently gone.
"Each of these tells a little bit of a story," political science
professor Rick Witmer says, pointing to entries in a computer database
he built from bits of detail about each of the claims. One entry lists a
family's lost art and household furnishings. Another, a cigarette factory.
"These are people's lives, the things that they lost. And you're not
going to be able to put that back together."
US law, though, demands that the government try. The embargo began with
a presidential directive. But in 1996, with tensions inflamed by Cuba's
downing of two planes flown by exiles dropping leaflets on the island,
lawmakers passed the Helms-Burton act, which, in part, made the embargo
a part of US law that could only be lifted by Congress.
"It is the sense of the Congress," the law says, "that the satisfactory
resolution of property claims ... remains an essential condition," for
the full resumption of relations between the countries.
Looking at the certified claims provides a window back to when Cuba was
home to a concentration of American wealth. Today, the biggest claims,
by corporations like Exxon-Mobil Corp and Coca-Cola, might well be
settled by giving them the right to do business in Cuba, Kelly says. But
claims holders will have to face the reality that the country doesn't
have the money to make them whole, he says.
"When the Cuban economy opens we will be facing the largest bankruptcy
of the 21st century, 90 miles off our shore," Kelly says. "So we need to
be creative about how those claims go away."

Source: Cuban snatched property claims reviewed - Yahoo7 Finance
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