“We have discovered that 11 companies in my district are infringing, shamelessly and openly, the Cuban embargo,” the congresswoman denounced.
Miami, United States. -Cuban-American congresswoman María Elvira Salazar (FL-27) asked the director of the US Financial Crimes Control Network (FINCEN) to investigate companies in southern Florida who, as she denounced, would be violating the embargo and financing the Cuban regime.
“Today in the Financial Services Committee I asked the director of FINCEN to investigate companies in the south of Florida who would be violating the embargo and finance the Cuban dictatorship. I also asked the Trump administration to punish any company that helps the regime. Every dollar that evades sanctions feeds the repression in Havana and steals the freedom from the Cuban people,” wrote in x.
In a fragment of her speech before the committee, the congresswoman said: “We have discovered that 11 companies in my district are infringing, shamelessly and openly, the Cuban embargo. These companies are doing business with the Cuban regime, giving it oxygen so that it can feed the repressive apparatus.” He also said: “I just sent a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury and Mr. Rubio, of the State Department, asking them to investigate and close them.”
Salazar asked for an explicit commitment to the Finn official: “Do you think you could have your word that you and your office will help me do something? (…) I would really like to have your commitment in the minutes.”
In response, the FINCEN representative said: “Thank you, Salazar Representative. I am very familiar with our restrictions to deal with the Cuban regime, so I commit to you that they will certainly examine this information and see how you can support investigations, either with the OFAC or with other US government agencies.”
Salazar finished off: “They are violating the embargo. You can’t do that because that is the United States law.”
Intervention gives continuity to Prior management of Republican congresswomanthat last month he requested in writing to the State and Treasury departments “investigating companies in southern Florida suspected of evading US sanctions and helping the Cuban dictatorship”, while warned: “The sanctions mean nothing if they are not fulfilled.”
According to that letter – made on August 21 and addressed to Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Scott Besent as Secretary of the Treasury – “a number of companies” would have recently opened in southern Florida “to offer a variety of services whose main purpose is the evasion of sanctions on the communist regime in Cuba”, so he asked to “examine these violations and take the appropriate action.”
Among the described modalities he mentioned “tourism packages”, “logistics”, door -to -door shipments, which, “they will allow to overcome restrictions. The congresswoman also recalled that a presidential memorandum of National Security on Cuba of June 30 “supports the strict application of sanctions to the regime.”
Salazar also warned about the background of some businesses: “Many of these companies are owned by the regime,” and cited as an example the case of Jorge Javier Rodríguez Cabrera“Associate Strait of one of Raúl Castro’s grandchildren”, recently detained by the US immigration and customs control service added that “it is not unthinkable that many of these companies have been created with the knowledge and consent of the communist regime.”
Salazar’s initiative received public support from his colleague Carlos Giménez, who wrote in x: “We are both for the repressors and the testaferros of the murderous dictatorship of Cuba that have infiltrated our community. We have identified them and we are calling on the administration to apply the entire weight of the law.”
