Converting Expropriations Into A Springboard For Investment

Converting Expropriations Into A Springboard For Investment / 14ymedio
Posted on December 12, 2015

14ymedio, Havana, 11 December 2015 — Financial compensation for small
claimants; tax breaks for big companies, principally multinationals, who
want to start businesses on the island: this is Richard E. Feinberg's
proposal in his report, Reconciling US Property Claims in Cuba, to
resolve the United States claims for the expropriations that occurred
after Fidel Castro took power in 1959. "Transforming Trauma Into
Opportunity" is the subtitle of the report.

In his study, Feinberg, a professor of international political economy,
analyzes the nearly 6,000 U.S. claims, divided between companies and
individuals, large and small, and suggests a hybrid formula by which
large conglomerates – which make up 1.7 billion dollars of the total 1.9
billion in claims, not counting interest – could have a range of
opportunities for investing with advantageous conditions, for example
through preferential rights of acquisition or through bonds that can be
redeemed for the payment of taxes.

This week, Cuba and the United States addressed, for the first time, the
issue of compensation, one of the thorniest issues in the dialogue
opened by both parties on 17 December 2015.

Participating in this "informational" meeting, according to U.S.
officials, were the Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister, Abelardo Moreno
Fernández, and a legal adviser to the State Department of the United
States, Mary McLeod.

Cuba, in its latest annual report on the impact of the embargo that it
presented to the United Nations, claimed that the economic damage of
more than half a century of the embargo amounts to over 833 billion
dollars, based on the value of gold. At current prices, the economic
losses total over 121 billion dollars.

For its part, the United States says that the expropriations carried out
after the Revolution amounted to nearly 2 billion dollars.

Source: Converting Expropriations Into A Springboard For Investment /
14ymedio | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/converting-expropriations-into-a-springboard-for-investment-14ymedio/