Update Cuba Restricted List, Lawmaker Tells State Dept.
The State Department should “immediately” update its Cuba Restricted List to capture affiliates of listed entities that are evading U.S. sanctions, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in a Nov. 28 letter to the agency. Although the list was created in 2017 to block U.S. people and companies from doing business with Cuban government-controlled entities, those entities have since created “dozens of new hotels and companies that fall outside the scope” the restrictions, Rubio said.
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He specifically pointed to Grupo de Turismo Gaviota, a hotel holding company owned by Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which opened the Hotel Grand Aston in Havana last year. But because that hotel isn’t on the restricted list, Rubio said, groups can organize “so-called ‘educational visits’ for American tourists to pay considerable sums of money to Gaviota and thereby fund the ongoing repression, the detention and the torture of Cuban children and political prisoners.”
“There is no reason for Americans to be complicit in the ongoing human rights violations against the Cuban people,” Rubio said, noting the list was last updated in 2021. “I urge you to immediately update the List of Restricted Entities and Subentities Associated with Cuba in order to account for” recently opened hotels and “close this glaring gap in our nation’s sanctions policy.”
A State Department spokesperson didn't comment.