The Trump-Pence Administration (2017-2021) on 2 May 2019 made operational Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 (known as “Libertad Act”). Title III authorizes lawsuits in United States District Courts against companies and individuals who are using a certified claim or non-certified claim where the owner of the certified claim or non-certified claim has not received compensation from the Republic of Cuba or from a third-party who is using (“trafficking”) the asset. 45 Lawsuits Filed (16 certified claimants & 29 non-certified claimants). LINK To Libertad Act Title III Lawsuit Filing Statistics
HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 2 (ACN) Statement by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
On January 31, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he apprised U.S. Congress of the revocation of the ban on lawsuits being filed in U.S. courts under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act and the reinstatement of the List of Restricted Cuban Entities, with the addition of the Cuban remittance management enterprise Orbit, S.A., preventing entities or persons in the United States from carrying out transactions on pain of being fined and having their assets frozen.
These are not unexpected actions. They are just further steps to undo the positive, albeit belated, decisions announced by President Joseph Biden on January 14.
This announcement is also likely to precede other measures that the team in charge of the Cuba issue in this government has designed since 2017 to strengthen even more, gratuitously and irresponsibly, the siege laid to Cuba to create new and avoidable scenarios of deterioration and bilateral confrontation.
The goal of these measures is to intimidate foreign investors and prevent them from contributing to Cuba's economic development and to the well-being of the Cuban people through the express threat of being sued in U.S. courts. They also intend to close all sources of external income to the overall Cuban economy; to tamper criminally with the ability of all public and private economic actors to provide goods and services; and to further deteriorate the living standards of the population affected by the blockade and the additional measures imposed during Trump's first term, so as to upset and destabilize society and to try to achieve the often dreamed of but never accomplished purpose of overthrowing the Revolution for purposes of domination and chastisement.
Along with these actions come smear and disinformation campaigns concocted by a powerful machinery of manipulation in digital platforms to discredit Cuba and hold it responsible for the impact of the criminal measures of the U.S. government, so that the world and the people of Cuba do not recognize their executioners.
These are the same politicians who are driven by their commitment to reactionary families and special interest groups in the U.S. and Florida and benefit from the blockade of Cuba by sacrificing the well-being and even threatening the sustenance of the Cuban people. These politicians of today are the same ones behind dozens of additional measures to the blockade that came into effect between 2017 and 2021.
Since the passage of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 and until 2019, all U.S. presidents, including Trump in the first two years of his previous term, have used executive powers to suspend the application of Title III every six months, aware that it contravenes International Law and the sovereignty of other States and that its application would generate insurmountable obstacles to the prospect that any claim made by Americans over properties legitimately nationalized at the triumph of the Revolution will be settled or any compensation being paid to them.
As a result, around 45 lawsuits have been filed in the courts since 2019, mainly against U.S. companies, which have been forced to spend money, time and energy to defend themselves against what experts deem a legal aberration with even unconstitutional overtones. Among the most significant is the extension of this policy to owners who were not U.S. citizens at the time of the nationalizations and whose alleged ownership has not been certified by anyone.
These measures have nothing to do with the national interest of the United States, or the wishes of a large part of the business community in that country to participate in the Cuban economy. On the contrary, it is linked to the desires of dictator Fulgencio Batista’s political heirs to reconquer Cuba.
It is proof of the corrupt nature of the U.S. government in general and, specifically, of its intention to asphyxiate the Cuban economy, cause harm to our people, and expect that we renounce the sovereign prerogatives whose conquest has cost so many years, efforts and lives.
With the reactivation of Title III, the application of the Helms-Burton Act is once again completed in its entirety, marked as it is by its extreme extraterritorial scope and for violating the norms and principles of International Law, contravening the rules of commerce and international economic relations and being harmful to the sovereignty of other States, mostly because its provisions affect companies and persons established therein. It has been broadly, consistently and almost unanimously rejected by the international community in the United Nations, specialized international bodies and regional organizations alike. Several countries have even enacted domestic laws to deal with the extraterritorial effects of this legislation.
The Government of Cuba reiterates the postulates of the Act on the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty (Act No. 80) and recalls the decision of the Provincial People's Court of Havana on November 2, 1999 to declare the lawsuit against the Government of the United States for Human Damages admissible, sanctioning it to make reparations to and compensate the Cuban people with the amount of 181,100 billion dollars. Subsequently, on May 5, 2000, the Tribunal determined the Economic Damages caused to Cuba and dictated the payment of 121 billion dollars for damages.
Cuba has reiterated its willingness to find a solution to mutual claims and compensations. The Cuban nationalizations were in line with the law and strictly in accordance with both the Cuban Constitution and International Law. All nationalizations provided for fair and adequate compensation which the U.S. government refused to consider. Cuba reached and honored global compensation agreements with other nations that today invest in our country, such as Spain, Switzerland, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.
Likewise, the Cuban government denounces and holds the U.S. government responsible for the immediate consequences that the new measure will have throughout the country against the right of Cuban émigrés to send remittances to and help their relatives, who are already suffering too much because of an intensified siege caused by the unjust and fraudulent inclusion of Cuba on the list of alleged State sponsors of terrorism.
Cuba rejects these decisions strenuously, firmly and categorically. We consider them as a new hostile and arrogant act and condemn the disrespectful and slanderous language of the State Department's communiqué, full of lies in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
No one will be fooled by their false pretexts to try to justify these and any other future outrage. They will only succeed in reinforcing the isolation and universal rejection of the shameful abusive attitude of U.S. governments toward Cuba and its population.
We call on the international community to side with our people by putting a stop and denouncing this new and dangerous onslaught of aggression that has just begun.
The U.S. authorities might cause great harm with their murderous and cowardly plans and measures, but they will never achieve their main objective of bringing Cuba to its knees in order to subjugate it. Cuba shall overcome!
