US Judge: Cruises to Cuba Were Not Allowed

MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge in Miami declared in a ruling that four major cruise companies conducted tourism operations to Cuba, which were prohibited by U.S. law between 2015 and 2019.

In her ruling on Monday, Judge Beth Bloom said that the cruise lines Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and MSC must compensate the descendants of an American businessman for using a Havana terminal that was confiscated after the Cuban revolution for travel outside the categories of travel allowed by the law.

After former President Barack Obama began a rapprochement with the island, the U.S. Treasury Department issued permits to cruise companies to transport U.S. passengers to Cuba, but that didn't mean people could travel for tourism, the judge said.

“The fact that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued permits to travel to Cuba and that officials of the executive branch, including the president, encouraged the accused to do so, does not automatically immunize defendants from their responsibility if they carried out tourist activities prohibited by law,” Bloom wrote.

The judge said in her decision that the matter could proceed to trial to decide the amount of compensation.

Bloom indicated that these companies carried passengers outside the categories of travel permitted by law. The 169-page court document shows that the four cruise lines also awarded millionaire contracts to various Cuban government agencies to use the terminal and conduct guided tours.

The document also revealed that the companies earned more than $1.1 billion in revenue from booking cruise ships with stopovers in Cuba.

When cruise passengers began traveling to Cuba in 2016, they went on excursions to nightclubs, landmarks, rivers and beaches.

That was before then-President Donald Trump announced restrictions in June 2019, prompting cruise lines to quickly eliminate their stopovers in Cuba and redirect their vessels on the fly.

A month before those restrictions were announced, the Trump administration decided to activate a provision of the U.S. embargo on the island that allowed Americans to sue almost any company that did business or benefited from property confiscated by the Cuban government.

All presidents had suspended what is known as Title III of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 since its adoption because of objections from US allies doing business in Cuba and because of the effect on future US-island negotiated agreements.

One of the exceptions to the provision of that law is for the uses of that property for legal travel, and Bloom said these cruises were not exempt.

The Havana Docks company is looking for around $9.2 million. Company president Mickael Behn is the grandson of William C. Behn, an American who owned three docks that were confiscated in 1960. Mickael Behn is an executive at a television station and lives in Miami and London.

Cruise companies did not respond to a request for comment. Nor could the lawyer representing Havana Docks be contacted at this time.